Our Story: A Family Business

11 comments Aug 1, 2017

Scott and his sisters Abby and Jody James all agree that the air plants growing in oak trees where they grew up in steamy South Florida were beautiful, but way too much trouble. Abby laughs remembering, “We used to climb high up in the trees in 99 degree heat and 98% humidity tugging away on giant air plants so that mom could use them to decorate for her backyard parties.”

Mom’s decorating ideas later became Scott’s business idea when he realized that the majority of Americans were not familiar with the hundreds of majestic tropical air plant varieties that can easily be grown indoors - even in homes where outdoor climates are much colder.

Scott began the process of acquiring numerous South American and Central American air plant species in his own nursery for mailing to homes everywhere.

Scott's mom uses her knack for design by creating many of the terrarium, wood and cork air plant creations for the shop as well as stylish gift wrapping ideas. She jokes that, “Moms are great at giving their children advice, so you might as well get paid for it.”

Jody enjoys working in the business so much, she wrote a best selling Air Plant Care E-Book for Amazon Kindle and also produces our videos for YouTube. Scott's other sister, Abby, handles the technical details of the website.

We also couldn't do this without our family friends Christian, Anna and Logan.

Christian comes to us from the Chicago area and has been working full-time for the company since he gradated from Flagler College in 2015. He is a long time plant enthusiast and is in charge of our greenhouse and warehouse operations in addition to our e-commerce stores. Christian loves to travel with his girlfriend Anna and has spent summers in Costa Rica and Colombia, becoming fluent in Spanish. Anna takes photographs for our website and social media accounts.

When Logan returns from his summer job commercial fishing in Alaskan waters, he uses his painting skills on our many handmade products and of course shipping orders.

Where Is The Air Plant Shop?

We're located in St. Augustine, Florida on Florida's gorgeous First Coast. St. Augustine, Florida is the Nation's Oldest City, first settled by Spanish Explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles in 1565. It's also home to AirPlantShop.com and the James family members involved in the business.

The Air Plant Shop is committed to providing you with the most beautiful, healthy and hardy air plants for home decor, design and gifts.

Air Plant Shop & Pencils of Promise

We have been working with Pencils of Promise since July of 2016. For every order, $1.00 is donated to our Pencils of Promise fund. Since the start of the program, we have donated over $100,000 and we have built a four classroom school in the community of Aldea Rosario Monte Maria in the disadvantaged Quiché Department. Read more on our blog!