About T-Rex Plants

Get to know the human behind the plants!

Hi, I’m Jen. 

I live in San Diego, with my partner, Dan. We have a house on roughly an acre of land, in the inland area of North County, San Diego. 

We have a lot of animals as well as plants, and I spend most of my free time taking care of one or the other. I do have a day job, and T-Rex plants is my hobby and passion outside of work. Thank you for visiting, and I hope you find the information here helpful! 

Jennifer Greene

I’ve been growing things, in some form or another, for 10+ years. 

I got my start with living creatures far earlier than that, with my first pet snake (Cindy) at age 5. 

That love of reptiles, ironically, is what led to the plants. 

I worked for one of the largest reptile & supply companies in the US for 7 years, running retail stores and eventually, the digital marketing. I also helped in the breeding facility, caring for blue tongue skinks as well as large pythons and boas. I built planted vivariums for dart frogs, as well as enclosures for raising baby chameleons, geckos, and other tiny creatures that needed high humidity.

You can probably see where this is going. 

While I no longer work in the reptile industry, I picked up a ton of skills that work extremely well for plant care. Most reptile keepers are the same – if you can figure out the conditions to make a reptile or amphibian thrive, a plant that doesn’t need daily food or water is a piece of cake.

While working with reptiles, I learned to research where a species comes from. It’s not just the geographic location, but also the particular part of the ecosystem the species resides in. Are they ground dwelling? Arboreal? Where do they spend their days, and what conditions do they need to trigger breeding behavior? When you look at where something spends most of its time, you get a feel for the conditions needed. 

 

echinocactus LA

Online Shop + Blog

I started up this website as for many of the more obscure species I love, it’s actually been quite a challenge to find reputable, quality information online. With the enforced time at home thanks to COVID-19, I decided to use that extra time to get this site built and ready to roll! 

I offer plants for sale that I keep personally, so I can generally provide care advice to anyone who needs it. While my region lends itself especially well to succulents and cacti, I do also dearly love tropical plants…although they definitely take a lot more extra effort to keep happy! 

Where possible, I’ll back up my discussion and claims with books, websites, or sources of the more experienced humans I was able to speak to about plant care. For many species, the best source of information can’t be found online, it’s in an expert’s head! That expert is often not online for one reason or another, so getting their wealth of info is hard if you’re not near enough to run into them at your local cactus and succulent society chapter.

Plants that are a challenge are fun to learn, but I do have quite a few of the easy-peasy species as well. With time, I hope to be able to showcase truly large specimen plants that are growing in the ground on our property. If you’d like to shop my Etsy store, click the button below!