Our plants are born in our greenhouse to grow in your home.
California Tropicals is a thriving family-owned operation established in Southern California. We manage our own inventory, take immense care of each individual product, and pack every order in the sharpest condition, so that it's ready for its journey home to you. Learn more about why we started, where we continue, and how we've grown in numbers.
- Grown in
- Southern California
- Shipping since
- 2019
- Ownership
- Family-owned, independent
- Grown from
- Our own stock plants
Origin
Why We Started.
In the first months of the pandemic, every physical plant shop shut its doors, and a whole category of living things simply stopped being available. We had the plants, but we didn’t have a way to move any around and across the country without killing it.
So we spent that year on the box. Different substrates, different bracing, different insulation, shipped through every season into every climate, until a plant leaving California on a Monday could arrive in New York on Thursday still worth unboxing. That packing method is the reason this shop exists.
Propagation
Where We Continue.
The plants we sell come off our own benches. We physically keep track of each individual plant, cut and water every single one of them, and grow them until they’re actually ready to sell rather than ready to photograph.
It’s a slower way to run a plant shop, and it’s the whole reason we can tell you how a particular hoya behaves in month four, or that a plant is harder to take care of than its listing photo makes it look. We’d rather lose the sale than have you lose the plant.
Record
How We've Grown.
On our Etsy storefront, we’ve been selling our plant inventory there the longest and it displays every review that is tied to a real order grown, packaged, and delivered by our team.
- Orders shipped
- 165,525
- Customer reviews
- 54,200
- Average rating
- 4.8 / 5
- Selling since
- 2019
Verify on our Etsy storefront (opens in a new tab)Checked August 19, 2026
Handling
Every box is packed for the weather it’s going into.
A plant leaving us in July and a plant leaving us in January aren’t packed the same way. We check the forecast on the route, not just the weather here, and we’d rather hold an order a day than send a tropical product into a cold night unprotected.
- Roots secured and the plant braced so nothing shifts in transit.
- Heat packs added for cold weather. Only orders with a heat pack and winter insulation are guaranteed against cold damage.
- Forty-eight hours to tell us something arrived wrong, and we’ll make it right.
Collection
What’s on the benches.
We grow tropicals that do well indoors and a good many that are harder to find: hoyas above all, then philodendron, syngonium, peperomia, sansevieria, calathea, monstera, pothos, ferns, and a bench of succulents and cacti.
The pots we ship in
- 2.5 inch
- A young, rooted starter. Small on arrival by design, and it establishes fast.
- 4 inch
- Our standard size. Established, several nodes in, ready for a shelf.
- 6 inch
- A fuller, older plant with visible size the day it lands.
Next
Pick a plant. We’ll get it there alive.
Let us show you the reason why we've been able to ship over 165,000 orders, and counting, to everyone's homes around the nation.
