Where Did the Name Prop Me Up Come From?

We get asked from time to time where the name Prop Me Up came from.

There’s actually a little more behind it than a play on words.

Before there was a plant shop, Selena spent more than 20 years working as a registered nurse. Nursing was a huge part of her life, but after more than two decades in the field, she reached a point where she knew she was ready for something different.

The problem was figuring out what that “something different” would be.

Throughout her years in nursing, houseplants had become a kind of escape. Caring for them was something she genuinely enjoyed, but it was also a way to decompress from a demanding career. There’s something about watering a plant, watching a new leaf unfurl, or successfully bringing a struggling plant back to life that forces you to slow down for a minute.

Eventually, an idea started to take shape: What if plants weren’t just the escape from work? What if they became the work?

And that’s how the idea for a plant shop began.

There were about a thousand things to figure out after that, but one of the first was surprisingly difficult:

What do we call it?

One night, we were sitting in the hot tub throwing names around when Lance came up with Prop Me Up.

“Prop” was the obvious plant connection — short for propagation, the process of growing new plants from cuttings or other parts of an existing plant.

But the second meaning was what made the name stick.

Plants had helped prop Selena up during some stressful years in nursing. Now, as she left a career she’d known for more than 20 years and started something completely new, they were doing it again — giving her a new passion, a new challenge and a new direction.

Prop Me Up.

That was it.

What started as an idea in a hot tub eventually became a real shop in Fairport, filled with plants, customers, classes, conversations, new friendships and more than a few propagations.

And in a way, the name still describes what we hope the shop can be for other people, too.

You don’t have to quit your career and open a plant shop. Sometimes bringing home a plant, watching it grow and having something living to care for is enough to make your day a little better.

Sometimes we all need something to prop us up.