Ivy League Botany Club adds jungle-like mobile plant shop to Central Texas

Walking inside is like taking a step into an almost liminal space, like a bus that ran off the road in Costa Rica and, in its abandonment, became overrun by tropical plants. For Barker, it’s a lifelong dream.

“I just love foliage and I want to live in a jungle like the Swiss Family Robinson,” Barker says.

The idea for the bus, unusual as it is for a plant store, is intimacy. Barker is soft-spoken, and, as she says, “kind of a recluse,” so a sprawling, outdoor plant shop with a dozen employees wouldn’t make much sense. The plant bus is a reflection of Barker’s personality, but it’s also a comforting space for both beginners and the discerning horticulturist. 

There is a wall shelf for small succulents, but Barker is particularly enamored of tropical plants, and thus Ivy League Botany Club is crammed full of alocasias and bromeliads. Bright green kokedamas hang from thin fishing string near the back of the bus, little self-contained bundles of soil wrapped in verdant moss. The plant’s place in the bus is both a nod to Barker’s part-Japanese heritage and for efforts in sustainability and minimalism.

Barker dreamed of being a park ranger after falling in love with plants as a student at Texas State (then-Southwest Texas State University) during an economic botany class, but upon graduation found slim prospects in the — pun intended — field.

Instead, Barker started work at an small organic plant nursery called Garden-Ville in San Marcos that has since closed. Knowing almost nothing about plants but yearning for knowledge, she spent years at the nursery, talking to farmers, landscapers, and horticulturists, before eventually giving her own talks to Texas State horticulture groups. 

A career change to acupuncture, a death in the family, and the birth of a child, all came in the intervening years, but Barker still held onto her plant obsession. Working at the time as an acupuncturist, Barker bid on a commercial space to lease but was outbid. 

“That was January 2020,” she says, realizing her paradoxical good luck in missing out just before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

In December 2020, Barker and her husband, local tattoo artist Zach Nelligan, purchased the bus for $7,000 from a man in Harlingen who had planned on using it for nature excursions but was foiled by the pandemic, and brought it to a mechanic, who told the couple that the engine had been Frankensteined together. Eighteen months and $16,000 later, it was up and running, but it was still very much just a bus: 10 seats, a wheelchair lift, no place for lush philodendrons to spread out.

So they got to work, every weekend grinding down metal and installing ceilings, each task more arduous than the last.

“It was an I Love Lucy skit in here,” Barker laughs.

Each seat had 24 holes that needed treatment, prepping, and plugging just to be able to put in the stone composite flooring necessary to withstand extreme temperature fluctuations in Central Texas. From there, one of Nelligan’s clients, the owner of Petrified Design, spent two months building out the wood structures inside and a sign painter from Manning Signs got to work on the exterior of the bus.

Barker then got to do the really fun stuff: buying tons of plants from Vickery Wholesale Greenhouse and populating the bus with greenery. There’s also Barker’s handmade soaps, in varieties like Earl Grey, orange and patchouli, and oatmeal, plus plant-based, hand-dyed goods like loofahs, and books on plants from a diverse group of authors.

It’s a veritable heaven for those with a green thumb — or those looking to turn a black thumb viridescent. Though the bus runs, for the plants’ sake it’ll mostly stay in its current location, save for meaningful pop-up opportunities elsewhere. She hints that the plant bus might make a trip down to San Antonio in a couple weeks at the opening of a friend’s business.

Talking about philodendrons, typically characterized by large, green leaves, Barker’s joy is palpable.

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“They have so much personality and they really fill a room,” she says, smiling, “and they make you feel like you’re in a little jungle.”

It’s clear that Barker is now living in a heaven of her own making, and she’s ready to spread the gospel of greenery to the rest of the city.