About Top Tropicals and all of us... || 
Russian
A New Generation of Tropical Plant Store
Until 2004 it's been a website www.TopTropicals.com for people to order fragrant, flowering and fruiting plants. Now it's also a Botanical Garden and Nursery you can visit any day of the week.
Top Tropicals is not an ordinary nursery. It is also information, photos, education, regular plant clinics… It's a new generation of tropical plant store.
Top Tropicals ships over 800 items Nationwide and around the World to your friends, family, business associates - anyone, anytime! Flowering plants, exotic perfume trees, fragrant plants, herbs, spice plants and over 200 varieties of exotic fruit trees - we have them all.
About us
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atiana and Mike came from Russia and settled down in South Florida, USA. They are growing a botanical garden "Tropical Boonies" that consists of hundreds of rare exotic tropical species... Every day we take pictures of new beautiful flowers. This is why we got the idea of creating this website with Catalog of tropicals. Easy-to-find advanced search is a must! Every time we got a new plant, it took quite a while to find right conditions that would please it; sometimes even the plant's real name wasn't easy to find. We had to buy many expensive books and color catalogs with thousands of tropical plants... And still, sometimes it's hard to find what you're looking for, isn't it? The more info available, the harder to find the right answer... So we decided to create our own Thing. :-) One more site in the Ocean of Information... We hope it is helpful! Right away our Catalog became very popular. When looking up information on Internet about some rare plant, very often we run into TopTropicals.com in first lines of Google... without any advertising! We are happy to admit that our visitors appreciated our Titanic Work and we try to provide you with more beautiful pictures and articles about tropicals plants. You may see our Catalog Updates every day on Catalog Updates page. Thanks for signing our Guestbook! |
Top Tropicals Team (special thanks - see below)
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Michael Dubinovsky (or
Mike, a.k.a. Udaff=Boa in Russian) is our Leader and Boss. He is an Optical
Engineer (specializing in lighting) and Aquarium expert. Programmer of all
the software for our website. Company financial director. All technical
support questions and questions where there is a $ sign - ask him. |
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Tatiana Anderson (or
Tanya, a.k.a. Krolik=Rabbit in Russian) is a Geographer and a Botanist.
Photographer, Web designer and Webmaster. All botanical questions and
photo inquiries - ask her. |
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Dave Lenard "The Indian
Chief" - Chief Development Engineer |
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Marina Rybka (Beer-Sheva, Israel) - Editor of Catalog, Photographer, Botany consultant. She solves puzzles about unknown plants and eventually solves all the mysteries. More info... |
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Eleanor Wilks (New Zealand - Australia) - Photographer. Thanks to Eleonor, in our Catalog we have amazing pictures of tropical plants from Australia and New Zealand. More info... |
Special THANKS to our friends, colleagues and teachers:
- Valery Kalishev (e-magazine Cutivar) - for giving us an idea of creating this website and Catalog and his faith in our plant obsession
- Murray Corman (Garden of Delights) - for introducing a wonderful world of tropical fruit and for enourmous amount of information and knowledge about horticulture
- Shirley (Bah's Nursery) - for the first tours in tropical plant world, for giving us our First Jasmine Sambac and for all her support at our start
- Richard Figlar (Botanist, Magnoliaceae taxonomist) - for his friendly advice and lessons on magnolias
- Ray Kaufman (Horticulturist) - for his tours around rare plants and our first taxonomy lessons
- Jesse Durko, Dolores Fugina, Richard Button, Sid Gardino, Joseph Fondeur - for sharing their knowledge and for the chance to take pictures of flowers from their collections
- Barbara and Billy Hopkins - for wonderful fruit trees and sharing knowledge about them
- Viki and Was Parrish, Marsha, Steve (Parrish Nursery) - for their support and help with rare plants propagation
- Jim Edwards (our friend) - for being always there for us in good and bad times, for his help and support with getting on our feet
- Eric LaBrum (Rare Fruit Council) - for sharing his knowledge of tropical fruit and interesting field trips
- Maria Gloria Rivera (Jasminum Emporium) - for her amazing enthusiasm and love, for help in Caribbean and with Caribbean plants
- Vicki Austin - a passionate gardener and a realtor who found "Tropical Boonies" for us
- Gordon Bower - Rare palm collector and Sun Herald Editor, for encouragement and faith in our success
- ...and many friends and professionals who helped us to become what we are!
Thanks to all
TopTropicals past employees
for their hard work and enthusiasm
BIO SUMMARY
Two Russians with a Plant Passion:
Michael & Tatiana @ TopTropicals.com
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Michael Dubinovsky Born in 1965, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Graduated with MS in Optical Engineering. In the US since 1993. Has 20 years experience working in various fields of optical and lighting engineering, computer programming and web design. Awarded with a number of patents. In 2002, using his programming and marketing skills, Michael together with Tatiana created TopTropicals.com – an online encyclopedia of tropical plants and a mail-order garden center. Within a few years, the TopTropicals.com became one of the most popular informational sources and a successful online plant store. In 2004, switched to a full-time horticulture/nursery business, import/export of rare exotic plants. At TopTropicals, Michael is a business leader; he provides all computer and high-tech support. He is a co-author of TopTropicals Books series. Tatiana Bondareva Anderson Born in 1966, in Moscow, Russia. Graduated from Moscow State University, MS in Earth Sciences. After graduating, worked at the University, and in Publishing/Advertising business. In the US since 1999, lived in Hawaii for 2 years, then moved to Florida with Michael in 2001. Tropical plants and photography were always her passion. Since 2001, grows plants professionally. Together with Michael, at first started a backyard nursery, which quickly grew into a Botanical Center of Rare Plants. At TopTropicals, Tatiana is a plant expert, horticulturist, photographer and web-designer. Her photographs of flowers and fruit are represented in many printed editions worldwide. Tatiana is a co-author of TopTropicals Books library, and together with Michael travels tropical countries in search of new plant introductions. Today, TopTropicals is not an ordinary nursery. It is also a source of useful information, beautiful high-quality pictures of rare tropical plants, flowers and fruit. It is a consulting center, plant clinic and a developing laboratory of plants propagation and hardiness research. TopTropicals Botanical Garden (Tropical Boonies) in Punta Gorda, FL, a new (2006) endeavor of Tatiana and Michael, is a 20-acre project that is currently under development. Tropical Boonies will give a chance to see many rare species from around the world, gathered in their collection. It will represent different gardens and landscapes of plants, adopted to Florida conditions: Fragrant Garden, Rare Fruit Gardens, Blooming Vines Galleries, Butterfly Garden, Succulent collection and many others. TopTropicals Publishing offers brochures about the most interesting tropical plants for beginners and hobbyists, for gardeners and landscapers. In plain language, with lots of colorful pictures, the books tell interesting facts about both known but yet not fully discovered species, and new introductions from tropical areas of different continents. More personal info: Homemade sushi
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