Moss Balls and Water Lilies WATERSCAPES AQUATIC PLANT NURSERY By Ginny Mink
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griculture has recently embraced the aquaculture arena. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of Ag programs within the school system that are setting up tanks and other related fish breeding facilities. Since that door has been opened and has on some levels broadened the perspective of what is deemed agriculture, we thought we might stretch the label even further and introduce our readers to WaterScapes an aquatic plant nursery with a Plant City address (though it seems a lot closer to Dover in reality). Maria and Pierre LePochat are the owners of this rather unique business. Maria started the interview by insisting that neither she nor her husband had agricultural backgrounds, though she revealed, “He worked his way through college doing lawn care and so that was his interest in the outdoors. He was always independent, interested in running his own business. He liked the outdoors and hands-on stuff.” Amusingly, as the conversation continued we discovered, to Maria’s own shock, that she had an even greater agricultural connection than Pierre’s lawn care. She explained, “My parents have a very small, 25 acre farm in Land O’ Lakes where I grew up. It sustained our family but my father was a teacher so it was never for income purposes. We had cows, pigs, chickens, goats. We used to milk the cows, always had our own milk, our own eggs and we would slaughter periodically so we had our own meat and we always had a vegetable garden.” We pointed this revelation out to her, and like so many other people we’ve interviewed, she thought she had to have an FFA history or an Ag degree to attest to having an agricultural background. Once we had determined that both Pierre and Maria have some outdoorsy, Ag-type history, we delved into what led them to the aquatic plant field. She explained that Pierre has a mechanical engineering degree while she has two bachelor’s degrees, one in art and one in math. They met in college at the University of South Florida. She says, “We moved to Albany, Georgia in 1990 when he got his job with Procter & Gamble as a manager at the facility and in the meantime we had five children, hence the stay at home mom. We’ve been married for 23 years and the kids range in age from 17-22.” Georgia was ok for them but their families were in Florida and they started trying to figure out how to return home.
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INTHEFIELD MAGAZINE
MARCH 2013
Maria explains, “In 2002, he (Pierre) purchased The Snailery from a couple who were running an aquatic plant nursery since 1972. The original location was in New Tampa on 6.8 acres, and then in 2006, we bought 16 acres in Plant City and slowly relocated the business. In 2002, when we purchased it, is when we changed the name to WaterScapes. We currently have about 15 employees and about 320 wholesale customers across the US and Canada. We sell live aquatic plants that people use in aquariums and ponds and water gardens. We grow about 60 percent here on site, then we have about 20 percent that are brought in by local collectors and then another 20 percent that are exotic plants that are imported from all over the world.” Maria admits, “We didn’t expect to end up here in any stretch of the imagination, it was just where the path led.” Though aquatic plants were indeed a stretch for them, they seem to have done well in the field. Pierre handles the facilities. Maria elaborates, “We are actively using six acres of the land in Plant City. Currently, there is a large 60 x 40 building that we use for office space, inventory and packing. Then we have ten greenhouses with over 41,000 square feet and another 30,000 square feet of growing space in covered vats. We sell over 200 different types of aquatic plants. Pierre was responsible for putting in all of that infrastructure. His responsibilities are nursery operations and he manages the entire staff.” When we asked about Maria’s responsibilities, she reminded us that she has an art degree, “It was fine art. I paint, watercolor painting, charcoal drawing, it was more of a hobby. I never thought I’d use the degree for anything, but at this point I handle the advertising campaigns and I do the in-house artwork and it helps with the website design.” That website address is: www.waterscapesnursery.com. She adds, “You could say it’s a family run operation. My husband’s sister, Maria Tatum, joined our staff in 2006. She is our sales/office manager.” In closing, we asked Maria which plant she liked best. She told us, “The water lilies; they’re the most showy with all the different color blooms. On the aquarium side there’s some really unique imported items. We have something called moss balls that are imported from Europe and are collected from cold water rivers and pretty much it’s an algae that rolls along the riverbed and forms a ball shape.” We’re not sure why people want to add algae to their aquariums but, to each his own. If you’re interested in seeing pictures of their other plants, check out their site: www.waterscapesnursery.com or if you’d like additional information you can always give Maria a call at: (813) 986 2503. W W W. I N T H E F I E L D M A G A Z I N E . C O M