Our History

Where It All Began

Herbert Riphagen, owner of ExoticsAtHome, was born in Rantepao on Sulawesi in Indonesia. His parents were involved in development work there.

His tropical childhood drew his attention to palms and tropical plants from an early age. The many years he spent travelling, particularly through Southeast Asia and South America after finishing school, followed from this early interest.

From a Private Garden to Tens of Thousands of Seedlings

In the mid-1990s, Herbert Riphagen came to the Netherlands with his then Indonesian wife. He wanted to create his own exotic garden in the Netherlands, but because these plants were not available online, he began buying seeds himself and germinating them in the attic.

These were initially mainly palm seeds, but the hobby grew to such an extent that by the end of the 1990s, tens of thousands of seedlings were already growing and were eagerly purchased by Spanish and Italian palm growers.

International Growth

At the beginning of 2000, Riphagen started a wholesale business specialising in palms and other exotic plants. Palms, tree ferns, other ferns and other exotic plants were imported from around the world and resold.

From the attic, a pioneering company grew into a large nursery in Erica, the company then known as GardenPalms, with two greenhouses covering a combined area of 35,000 square metres. The scale continued to increase in the years that followed. At its peak, hundreds of thousands of palms stood in a large greenhouse complex in Erica.

Germany became a key market, a show garden was established in Wezep and the webshop became multilingual. At the same time, Herbert’s name remained associated with expeditions, origins, cold hardiness and stories about rare palms.

A New Direction and the Creation of ExoticsAtHome

At the end of the 1990s, many people thought that Herbert Riphagen was not making a wise decision by importing palms. According to experts, he was thinking far too big because the market was not that large. This was mainly because many people at the time did not yet know that these palms were cold-hardy. It later became clear that Riphagen had chosen the right path.

Years later, MyPalmShop became the leading website in Europe for cold-hardy palms. By germinating seeds and growing and trading these cold-hardy palm species for many years, Riphagen became a specialist in cold-hardy exotic plants and palms.

However, his real passion lies with the more tropical palm species and plants. These are more beautiful, more diverse and more difficult, and therefore also more challenging.

To free up more time for this, Riphagen decided to sell the MyPalmShop webshop in 2024. The wholesale business was gradually wound down and discontinued in 2026. This decision enabled him to expand his activities in Thailand further. After all, he still prefers to spend all day in flip-flops and shorts.

Business in the Netherlands and Thailand

Through his many contacts and annual journeys, particularly to Asia, Riphagen started a business in Thailand in 2024. The reason for this is that this company makes it much easier for him to send all the new plants he finds to his business in the Netherlands.

The Enduring Portrait

Riphagen’s significance did not lie in formally naming new species. He made rare plants visible, brought material and stories to Europe, tested different origins in practice and built a market and a community around those plants.

The Thai phase of recent years is bringing Riphagen back to the core: searching, selecting, growing plants slowly and discovering new species in the wild to make remarkable plants available internationally.