Tropi-Canna

CANNABIS

Tropi-Canna Shelia & Trevor Cooper

Step into Sheila and Trevor Cooper’s place of business and you’ve entered, not a place of work, but a place of passion: a cozy community where the couple is dedicated to meeting their customers’ needs. “When you’re doing something you love, when you’re helping people, it’s not work, it’s passion,” Sheila Cooper said. “It’s a passion we share with each of our customers.”

That passion is helping customers grow cannabis. Not only by selling special soils, fertilizers and grow lights, but by offering advice and education on plant types, growth, diseases, etc. “Growing cannabis is a craft, just like brewing beer or making wine,” Trevor Cooper said. “There’s a lot of science that goes into it.” The Cooper’s business, Tropi-Canna, LLC, was founded in 2021, after use of both medical and recreational cannabis for adults was legalized in Virginia and households were allowed to grow up to four plants for personal use. The Coopers credit a Virginia Cannabis Growers Symposium held at Belmont Farm Distillery in August 2021 for giving them the inspiration to launch the new business. Approximately 1,000 people attended the first-ever marijuanathemed grow festival and education event. Lignumhemp farmer Mike Sauer, who organized the symposium, was instrumental in helping the Coopers get Tropi-Canna started. At his encouragement, the two, Sheila a manager at ACE Hardware and Trevor a heavy equipment operator, combined their paychecks to buy a pallet of Ocean Forest and Coast of Maine soils, which they sold at the symposium to fund their budding business’s first inventory. They first sold their wares at ACE Hardware. As customers and the business grew, they expanded into their current location on South East Street. At this location the store sells a variety of products – Fox Farm, Coast of Maine, and Ocean Forest soils, some organic, some with earthworm castings, good for growing not just cannabis but other garden plants. They sell supplies for hydroponic gardening as well—coco, clay pebbles, and rockwool. Then there are liquid fertilizers, insect sprays, CO2 boosters, grow tents, ventilation systems for those tents, and terp teas to boost flavors and smells. Just like with any other plant, growing cannabis can be “finicky”, according to Sheila. “You have to know what conditions are favorable to avoid stressing the plant,” she said. There are many strains of cannabis, each with their own unique combinations of taste, look, levels of THC and CBD, and effect or application. The Coopers hear testimonies of how using cannabis has helped their customers — how it eased the pain of terminal lung cancer for one and diminished the epileptic seizures of another. The couple themselves can attest to the plant’s benefits. It relieves health issues of their own like anxiety, restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia — without the need for harmful opioids and prescription drugs with dangerous side effects. issues of their own like anxiety, restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia – without the need for harmful opioids and prescription drugs with dangerous side effects. The ability to grow cannabis at home makes that relief more accessible and affordable, and customers appreciate the local, friendly help the Coopers provide in that venture. The store also extends its support to local artisans by selling hand crafts such as tie-dye t-shirts and homemade jewelry and has participated in neighborhood school supply and food drives. “Tropi-Canna is a community, not a business,” Sheila said. “People come here not just for our products but because we’re down to earth and personal.”