BarTrop Plants owner Andres Cardenas ran the extra mile and turned his backyard nursery into a brick-and-mortar.
The rare and exotic plant shop moved into 3017 Indianola Ave. in April., and is expected to open its doors to customers in the next couple of months. Cardenas is in the process of building a greenhouse in the basement, and the extra space means a wider variety of tropicals, from affordable houseplants to pricier rare plants.
Cardenas said his ultimate vision is to provide a stress-free environment that can eventually be turned into a botanical garden.
“I’m really trying to focus on more of the community aspect of our business versus just focusing on plant sales,” Cardenas said. “I don’t come from the retail side of things, so the last thing I want is for people to feel pressured to buy something.”
Cardenas said he knew he wanted to own a business, but he didn’t know what his passion was until a self-discovery trip in 2017. The trip was inspired by business professor Andrew Johnston, who in a TED Talk suggests the best business education is to run a marathon.
Having been an athlete before, Cardenas decided to give it a shot and ran two races in his family’s home country of Colombia. Throughout the month-long trip, he traveled the country and visited family while praying he’d discover his passion.
It wasn’t until he returned to Columbus that he recognized the answer he was looking for.
“Everything here is horizontal landscapes, and a lot of what is in Colombia is a lot of vertical landscapes where they’re covering entire buildings,” Cardenas said. “That’s when I started to realize, wow, I think I have an interest in this.”
In March 2018, Cardenas started working at Acorn Farms Inc, a wholesale nursery, where he gained his horticultural knowledge and experience. Cardenas knew he wanted to continue pursuing tropical plants, so he started growing them at home.
“That’s when the passion really sparked and got started from there,” Cardenas said.
Cardenas left his job in December 2019 and unofficially started BarTrop Plants. At the time, he didn’t know it would become a full-time job. Cardenas kept losing plants through the resale scene and noticed a need for quality growers in the rare and exotic plant market.
“So I just started growing plants for myself,” Cardenas said. “If nobody else is going to provide this, then I might as well just provide it for myself. And then before I knew it, I was ordering over 500 plants from Thailand.”
Cardenas built small greenhouses in his room, the basement and the living room of his house.
“The entire house was filled from head to toe,” Cardenas said.
In February 2020, Cardenas created the business name and social media accounts for BarTrop Plants. To prepare for his first booth at the Columbus Makers Market, Cardenas ordered a shipment of affordable houseplants from Florida, but was only able to participate in one market before the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown.
Cardenas pushed the leftover product on Facebook Marketplace and said he was downsizing his collection.
“From there, all my products sold so quickly that I was like, ‘Oh shoot, maybe this could actually turn into a business,’” Cardenas said.
BarTrop Plants is located at 3017 Indianola Ave., and is expected to open for retail in the coming months. A link to the shop’s Etsy and Facebook accounts can be found on its website.
All photos by Ashley Kimmel