March 6, 2021 by IG
Alexander Ruppert on Making His Passion His Job
Alexander Ruppert (or Fruchtpudding, as you may know him) is a rockstar, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. He really knows plants. He understands taxonomy, he knows what plants need to be happy, he knows how to propagate them and his love for them is clear to everyone. But he’s also incredibly generous with his time and knowledge and patiently answers everyone’s questions, never turning any of us away, even though he’s a very busy guy. As most of us in the Garden Revival community know, Alexander is getting ready to open a business and we just can’t wait to find out more about it.
Today, I’m sharing the story Alexander told me a few months ago about this new endeavor with his two business partners. And look for another post on the blog with more details once Jungle Leaves, located in Herten, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany opens for business.
IG: What kind of business do you have?
Alexander: We’re opening a nursery that sells locally and online (within the EU). Locally we will be offering mostly regular seasonal garden plants, with the occasional rarer plant thrown in. The online business will focus on rarer tropical (indoor) plants, like various aroids, begonias, ferns, smaller and delicate terrarium plants, ant plants, even tropical fruit plants and whatever other ornamental plants at least one of us finds cool enough to grow.
IG: Why did you decide to start this business?
Alexander: There is a large and long lasting trend for younger people to grow more and rarer plants over the last decade or so. Houseplants are very sought after now and that reflects in the ever rising demand. Coming at this from the perspective of a hobbyist I’m really just seeing that trend and making my passion a job. I know firsthand that there’s a huge market there, and a sore lack of supply for the sort of plants I want. Initially I wasn’t sure about making this my actual job, but after finding a great location near me I pulled the trigger on it and now I’m just hoping it works out.
IG: What is your typical workday like?
Alexander: As I’m also still finishing my master’s thesis I don’t work at the greenhouse every day. Luckily we’re a team of three and have divided the work between us. On the days I am there the first thing I do is to inspect all plants for potential signs of trouble, water needs and just to see how they’re all doing. That can take a while but it’s definitely worth it to spot any upcoming problems early. Then usually I water what needs watering and only after that is when I start with whatever needs doing. Right now there’s a lot of renovations that need to happen and we are working down the list of things that need doing. For example, this includes a lot of garden work (we have a nice garden attached to the greenhouse that we are also using), fresh coats of paint everywhere, setting up greenhouse tables for plants and sales tables for the local store, repaving large parts of the front of the property, where the outdoor sales area will be, fixing up the heating, pipes and sanitary equipment, doing electrical work like rewiring outlets, finding and fixing shorts, installing new and efficient LED lights and so much more. Some tasks are more daunting than others, for example doing roof work but all three of us are pretty handy with stuff like that and it has been going smooth so far with no major setbacks.
This all will be done at some point of course (well, as “done” as you can ever get with this sort of work, something will always need fixing) and then my typical day will be more sales oriented. It will be a mix of talking to customers, manning the counter, packaging plants for the online shop, managing the new plants that come in for the local sales and doing plant care and propagation in the greenhouse. Sounds like a lot but with the three of us and one or two potential part time employees, this should be manageable if we divide the work intelligently.
IG: What is the most enjoyable part of your job?
Alexander: Anything to do with plant propagation and maintenance. There’s just something inherently enjoyable about seeing a fresh tray of separated, healthy seedlings that you’ve grown for months, or finding surprise flowers on a rare plant that are now ready for pollination. Or just repotting our big mother plants, it gives a sense of progression and feels like you’ve done something right. All the manual labor is enjoyable for the same reason too, you do get something done after all, but with plants it’s more satisfying, probably because you can’t just ignore them for a few months like you can do with, say, fixing a leaky faucet.
IG: What is the most difficult part of your job?
Alexander: Physically, definitely the paving, you really feel that the next day. But that’s probably not what you meant. In general, it has been difficult to get stuff, such as new tanks for our heating, or appointments, for example at the city’s office where we need to register our business. A lot of businesses are closed or running reduced hours at the moment and there’s a lot of time consuming and exhausting work involved chasing after getting an appointment or a delivery of something specific. This results in pretty much everything being delayed or difficult in some way, and having to find other solutions in the meantime. For example, our heater ran out of oil and we could just not get a quick delivery of new oil, even though it was promised. So we had to scramble to get an electric heater set up to bridge this unexpected gap in heating. Things like that.
IG: Have there been any surprises, good or bad, in running your business?
Alexander: Both actually. Feedback and responses from potential customers have been the best surprise so far. Both online and locally people are really excited for what we’re doing, and I didn’t expect it at the magnitude we have seen. For example, if we do any garden work (it’s at the front of the property) we can barely go 20 minutes without someone coming along the fence and asking us if we’re opening a nursery again here soon. That really gives me hope this will work out.
For bad surprises nothing really springs to mind immediately. I was surprised at how needlessly complicated it is for someone to open a business selling plants. The amount of regulation surrounding this is a lot of work I did not expect, and the more I look into it, the more I get the feeling a lot of online plant stores operating from Germany probably have not considered even half of these and would get fined if they were ever scrutinized by the authorities.
IG: What are your top three favorite plants and what is your least favorite plant?
Alexander: Picking a top three is really hard for me, considering I had to open a business and rent a greenhouse to fit all of my favorite plants to grow. That’s a lot more than three. Really, my favorite is usually whatever is the newest, is currently flowering or I am currently looking at. That feels like a bit of a copout though, so I’ll just name three fantastic plants that I’m currently either looking to get or am excited about: Nepenthes edwardsiana, my dream carnivorous plant to grow. Fredclarkeara After Dark ‘SVO Black Pearl’, the first orchid I got after getting into orchids and finally flowering this year after 5 years of waiting. Begonia pavonina, maybe the most spectacular iridescent begonia that I always enjoy and that I seem to never get tired of. At this point I’ve propagated hundreds of these and I still enjoy seeing their blue shimmering leaves every single time.
My least favorite is, in contrast to my most favorite, a very easy pick. It’s bamboo. Specifically, whatever kind of bamboo it was that I had to painstakingly manually remove from about 100 m² of paving this summer. It’s not that I can’t appreciate the sheer invasiveness of this overgrown grass, but I would rather appreciate it from away and not on my property. If I ever am forced to grow bamboo for some weird reason, I’ll put it in the kind of jail they put Magneto into in X-Men 2. It feels like that is the only way to contain this menace.