SHALIMAR — Aranda keeps growing.
Husband and wife, Aaron and Amanda Rippert (aka their relationship name Aranda), have transformed what was once just Aranda Lawncare Services into Aranda Lawn & Garden, a landscaping business, and Wildwood Garden Nursery and Store by Aranda, a boutique-style nursery and garden center in Shalimar – which has also turned into an event and workshop space.
And while Amanda can’t say with conviction that it was their dream, she can honestly say that they’re living the dream now.
“After the events, after everyone’s gone, him and I are going to pour a glass of wine and we’re just going to sit here and cry,” Amanda said.
“I think the best time was just before opening, we had all the lights on and all the factories were set up and we were about to open,” Aaron said. “We set up two chairs in the back corner there, and we just breathed a sigh of relief, we just ordered dinner and were like, ‘Did we really do that? ”
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Aranda Lawncare Services started as Aaron with a lawn mower hidden in the back of Amanda’s Honda Pilot five years ago. But he always saw it as more.
“I’m a dreamer,” Aaron said. “So whenever I have an idea for something, I think of the most important thing; I think it’s far in the future.
They were inundated with maintenance requests when customers also started asking for flower beds. Driven by demand and armed with a $20 cellphone app, they quickly got into landscaping.
“We would do four or five hurdles and then show them to the client,” Amanda said. “We noticed that the customer would still buy it if you could show them the visual because a lot of people aren’t very visual. They need to see it; they don’t really understand.
The two were an undeniable team.
Aaron is great with people, Amanda said.
“He constantly has his head in the books, learning the different types of personality traits, and he makes a point of remembering someone’s name,” Amanda said. “He’ll even put little notes in his phone about people so that when he meets them again, he’ll remember them. He really is the quietest smart guy I know.
“She’s so creative,” Aaron said of Amanda. “I am the big thinker. I push for it, but she made it all happen the way she did. She knows when things are going wrong. She knows what to do. I go out and wake up every day and do it.
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Amanda and Aaron have always loved plants and working in the yard, Amanda said. They even have an Airbnb on the same street as the nursery called The Garden House.
While doing lawn maintenance, Amanda began posting short, humorous social media videos on Facebook and Instagram under the segment name “Spruce It Up.”
“I knew we could make it fun, so I started watching other lawn trepreneurs, if you will, and they were funny and silly, but they were the ones making videos of them doing mowing lawns, and I was like, ‘Oh, we could have so much fun with that,’ she said.
Their audience loved it.
“Aaron and I would really be a part of it, and we always had morning coffee on the way,” Amanda said. “I always lost my cup of coffee. It was kind of a gimmick, and it really isn’t a gimmick. It’s so true. Like, this is bad. That or my phone is dying or I’m running out of gas. It was really fun. It made us say on camera what we’re trying to accomplish.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they replaced maintenance with compost, Amanda said. They are now a primary retailer for Comand specialty top dressing that eliminates the need for large teams, she said.
“Then my husband said, ‘We should open a nursery,’ and I thought, ‘You’re out of your tree. ”
“There’s only one nursery in this area, and it’s in Niceville, and I just recognized a need,” Aaron said. “Fortunately for us, plants are a huge trend right now. We found that craft nurseries were really starting to become popular across the country, and we were like, ‘Perfect’.”
Amanda hesitated, but she already had space in mind. For the same number of years that she and Aaron had eaten at the Aegean restaurant at the end of the same street, Amanda had walked past the little cottage at 6 10th Ave. in Shalimar,
“We honeymooned in Greece so when we got back we ended up eating there like every night for a month because we just didn’t want the honeymoon to end,” he said. she declared. “So corny.”
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There they met the owner of the restaurant and the chalet.
“One day we were talking and I was like, ‘What are you planning to do with this building?’ We needed an office to rent because at this point we’re working in our house and we wanted to start hiring staff,” Amanda said. “She’s like, ‘Oh, you want to use it? You can have it.’ … I’m like, ‘OK, this could be a nativity scene; it will be a small nursery. ”
She still remembers coming up with a conceptual design for the nursery that is almost identical to what exists now. This, however, would not have been possible without Veronica Deveau, Office Coordinator and Marketing Manager, and Chrystal Hisey, Incubator Manager and Operations Manager, who came into their business by pure chance.
The Ripperts purchased the property in July and spent three months gutting it completely. Amanda then realized she could use the interior of the space for a boutique.
“I’m originally from England, and I love all things like English flowers, gardens and cottages, and I love certain patterns and bunnies and everything lovely in English,” he said. she declared. “When I realized that I could put a few of these things in here and then we can have plants inside because (Deveau) is like a huge indoor plant guru, everything just evolved. “
Wildwood Garden Shop and Nursery opened Oct. 2 with a grand opening that many of the 600 attendees considered a fall festival, Amanda said. There were pumpkins, cookies, a photo station, and face paint.
Now they plan to recreate it every year.
The gift shop received many customers over the holidays, and they have since used the indoor and outdoor space for workshops such as wreath and bouquet making, and events such as private parties and photo shoots.
Aranda’s next move as a couple is to expand the nursery to the property across the street, from which the name “Wildwood” was born. The property looked wild before they cleared it, Amanda said.
They can’t help but think that fate played a part in their plant-centric business.
“We got married at Eden Garden and had seed packets made for our wedding,” Amanda said. “That was before we were going to do any kind of landscaping. Our seed packets said, “Crazy about each other. Plant our seeds and watch us grow. (It was) symbolic of our growth. Then we launched Aranda Lawn & Garden. Then we opened the Airbnb, The Garden House. And now we have Wildwood Garden Nursery.
They also want to help others grow. They plan to host networking events for others in the landscape industry.
“The biggest problem when we got into this business, it was impossible to get help or information on how to grow your business, no one else would help you,” Amanda said. “There is so much work to do, we should all help.”
They can’t wait to see where Aranda goes next.
“We just went after; we didn’t know what we were doing,” Aaron said. “There is no stopping now.”
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