Costa-Farms-Trending-Tropicals

We established the Trending Tropicals® collection in 2019 because we saw an opportunity to help make commercially rare and unique houseplants more available to everyone -- not just collectors willing to pay a lot for these varieties. Our Plant Hunters, Mike and Justin, travel the world looking for new varieties. Mike has been on the hunt for new plants for more than 40 years, visiting locales around the world, from tiny villages in Southeast Asia to some of the world's largest tradeshows in Europe and the United States. Justin is a plant lover who's been in the horticulture industry for more than 25 years and is training with Mike.

Where New Plants Come From

Wondering what a plant hunting trip is like? Mike and Justin fly around the world, often for weeks at a time, visiting plant breeders, going to plant markets, attending trade shows, and shopping at local nurseries. If you're imagining them trudging through tropical jungles, we hate to disappoint, but we don't collect plants from the wild. If our Plant Hunters are lucky enough to find a new variety they want to test, it usually just starts with importing a couple of plants -- sometimes even just one!

Testing New Houseplant Varieties

After the plants arrive and get settled from international shipping, we begin the testing process. Not every variety we test passes, but every variety we bring to you needs to meet the following standards:

1) It has to grow well in the average home -- we want you to be successful
2) We need to be able to grow it well in our Miami, Florida conditions
3) We need to be able to propagate it efficiently
4) It has to hold up to being shipped to your local store or directly to your home
5) It has to survive long enough at the average store for you to have the opportunity to bring it home

We're testing dozens of new varieties, so keep an eye out for new additions to the collection! Likewise, we may phase out varieties as we add to the collection.