About us

Orchardcards.co.uk is an online greetings card shop carrying a huge range of upmarket and unsentimental cards for birthdays and other occasions, cherry-picked from nearly a hundred publishers and artists. We specialise in greeting cards depicting natural history and country life, and have a strong humour range. We also offer a good choice of traditional (non-chocolate) advent calendars during the autumn season.

We try to provide the highest levels of customer service with all the convenience of shopping on the internet. Although we quote 3pm in our “Terms and Conditions” (to err on the cautious side in busy periods), in practice most orders received before about 4.15pm on a working day are dispatched the same afternoon. Many arrive with Royal Mail the next morning.

Our history

The idea sprang from a dearth of the kind of arty cards I like locally, which fostered a habit of stocking up in bulk at card shops further afield.  I realised that other people might also find it convenient to buy greetings cards by mail order and so, after fifteen years working in finance and having struggled to juggle a professional career with two young children, we started Orchard Cards in April 2006 and it’s been growing ever since.

The team

In the office, based in rural South Cheshire, you may come across me, Tonia Rutherford (I do all the stock buying, manage the website content, many of the customer service queries and all of the financial stuff), my husband, Richard Rutherford who is in charge of making the tea and other trivial stuff such as logistics, technology and marketing, and Kate & Charlie who help to pack the orders.

We hope you like the site, please do get in touch if you have any comments or suggestions.