News & Announcements

Texas Winter Storm Update

February 16, 2021
As many of you know, we are in the grip of a historic winter storm in Houston. There were times at night where our outdoor temperature fell to 14F. McMurdo station in Antarctica was warmer than that. Nearly half of the city has no power and the rest of the city is dealing with rolling blackouts. As of this writing Zone 9 Tropicals has had the exceedingly good fortune to not have suffered lost resources. Our inventory, which is very sensitive to low temperatures is, so far, safe. Our good fortune has allowed us to take in some stock from our smaller competitors, who sell plants on Etsy, Instagram or eBay and other platforms, and lost power or resources to safely maintain their stock. They stood to lose some of their livelihoods and investments. We are morally obligated to help.

To our northern visitors who regularly experience colder conditions: please understand that our infrastructure and homes are not built to withstand these conditions. We are more able to withstand hurricanes and floods, not sustained, prolonged arctic temperatures.

To our customers waiting on shipments to be dispatched: Thank you for your patience. We are hoping to resume some shipments on February 22 and full operations shortly thereafter.

We are not out of the woods yet, but I cannot stress enough that we acknowledge how fortunate we have been in the face of the misery befalling our neighbors and friends, our fellow Texans.

Please be safe hug your loved ones.

Winter Weather Warning & Shipping Delay

February 13, 2021
Bitterly cold weather continues to grip the Houston area. We are again enacting our cold weather shipping policies and suspending shipments this week. We encourage our customers and visitors alike to read our Winter Shipping Policy. Also, our greenhouses, normally open to the public, are closed during this event.

The next shipping window is February 22.

We ask everyone to take care and be safe. Let’s all sit down with a cup of hot chocolate and our favorite book. This will be over in a few days.

Winter Weather Shipping Delay

February 5, 2021
We are placing all orders on winter hold until conditions improve as unseasonably cold weather creeps across the US next week. Packages slated to ship the week February 8, 2020 will be delayed until the next shipping window: February 13. Although some destinations such as California and South Florida will have favorable weather, conditions along the shipping routes our packages take are not amenable to safe travel of tropical plant material. We apologize for the inconvenience, but we'd rather delay the product than have our customers be disappointed over receiving dead plants.

Please read our Winter Shipping Policy details surrounding our practices during inclement weather'

Holiday Shipping

December 9, 2020
As the holidays loom on the calendar, we are pausing all shipping on orders placed after Saturday, December 12, 2020, until Monday January 4, 2021. The pause is mainly driven by the extra time in transit plants might take if delayed by postal holidays during that time. If you place an order after December 12th, it will not ship until Monday January 4th.

The team at Zone 9 Tropicals wishes everyone a safe and merry christmas, joyous holidays and a happy, prosperous new year.

Website Server Failure

November 24, 2020
On Saturday November 21 the server hosting Zone 9 Tropicals failed. Although the provider of the service promised quick resolution, as of today, November 24, this has not happened. We are now on a new server and, as may be expected, the task is monumental. Everything from the online catalog to email to ecommerce capabilities has to be recoded and reenabled on a new server. To say that I am angry is an understatement, but I am looking to see where I can make improvements while I am stabilizing the site.

The restored site is 2 weeks out-of-sync with our operations and I am working to close that gap. Although we lost access the backend where our orders reside, we retain other electronic records and hard copies of outstanding obligations so they are in no danger of being lost.

I wasn't expecting to spend the holidays restoring Zone 9 Tropicals' website, but I gotta do what I gotta do.