SEMILLA IS JUST TOO MUCH FUN
CE S A R D U R A N is banned from starting any more businesses. At least, that’s what his siblings joke. Cesar loves the rush of launching a company from scratch — the fresh idea, the crazy hours, the hard work that goes into creating something sustainable. And, of course, the fun of bringing siblings Carla and Juan along for the ride.
The latest Duran endeavor is an eccentric plant shop nestled in downtown Fullerton, where they whittled an old dance studio into the bright community hub. Semilla opened its doors in March 2021.
As the trio reclines in the shop’s “calathea lounge,” their resemblance is undeniable — curly hair frames their smiling faces, glasses sit on their noses and their laughter rings like the bells on the front door.
“In the beginning, I was like, ‘You’re crazy. Like, we cannot do this,’ ” Carla says, Pothos N’Joy leaves dangling above her. “But it’s like, the three of us together. We each bring something so different to the table. And we’ve gotten so much closer in this, and I love how much this has helped our family grow and develop.”
While Carla spearheaded the business side, Cesar and Juan muscled through construction, including hand-crafting wood tables and shelves. That’s how the three work, rounding each other out to form a powerful team. Cesar is the innovator, spilling out ideas and immune to limits. Juan is a problemsolver who thinks outside the box. Carla reins them both in, adding the voice of reason.
“I’m very practical,” she says. “I try to keep things very —”
Cesar interjects, “She makes a list. She makes a list about making a list.”
Juan jumps in. “Carla, it’s like she’s the only one in the household that looks like she has a real job.”
“Because I do,” says Carla, and they all laugh. (She works for the L.A. housing authority.)
Music hums through the store speakers surrounding a working record player. Without seeing the face behind the register, it’s easy to tell which Duran is working by the music. Carla favors soul and old hip-hop, while Cesar loves funk and mambo. Juan will do anything for Bad Bunny.
Stronger than their opinions on music are their opinions on plants. Carla loves cactus — a passion grown from family trips to Baja. Juan points to his leg, inked with a mini monstera. Cesar raves about the purple waffle. “The plant that like nobody else likes here, I guess,” he says as his siblings laugh. “I love it. It’s so cool.”
“The best part is that Cesar bought like 20 of them,” Juan says of the crinkly, purple-tinted perennial. “We never buy a stock of 20 plants ever, but Cesar for some reason liked this plant so much that he decided to buy 20 of them, and now there’s 20 purple waffles throughout the whole store.”
There’s far more to see in the shop than greenery. Mementos from the Duran family are scattered throughout Semilla, from the sewing machine given them by their neighbor to their mother’s homemade candles.
A potted Dieffenbachia rests on a chipped Craftsman toolbox, a nod to the Durans’ love for cars. With a mechanic as a father, they all picked up the habit of restoring old vehicles. A peek behind the store might mean a sighting of Juan’s ’63 Dodge Dart convertible or Cesar’s 1970 Mercedes Benz. Then there’s the spontaneously purchased — and allegedly ugly — old lowrider limo, used mostly for rides to Home Depot.
In the lounge, potted plants surround an old camera from an Oklahoma antique shop. Behind it rests a typewriter on which the Durans learned to type — homage to their uncle’s typewriter repair business.
“Sometimes we’ll put paper and write like dumb little messages to each other, just because it looks cool. You know? Like…,” Juan starts to laugh. “Like a fake ransom note.”
Above the register is a framed, faded map of Sinaloa,
Mexico, where much of the massive Duran family still resides. Cesar, Carla and Juan’s parents immigrated to Southern California before they were born but the family frequently visits. The siblings grew up in Fullerton, rooted in the community long before their business.
Their house, a.k.a. “Mini TJ,” brims with fruit trees and lavender bushes, crafting a backyard rainforest that reminds them of Sinaloa. Socorro Duran warns her children to take care of her plants when she’s away, and Mother’s Day brunch is forgotten in favor of a plant nursery trip. Once, during an eclipse, she convinced them to move a 10-foot avocado tree to the yard’s other side because it looked sad, Cesar says.
“My mom would be like, ‘We’re gonna put an avocado tree in the backyard, do you want to dig a hole?’ And you’re like a 10-year-old like, ‘OK, I’ll help,’ and then you realize it’s hard labor. Like I just got bamboozled.” On Mondays, Socorro comes to Semilla to water and sing to the plants. The shop is small, with a staff of six: the siblings; Socorro; Cesar’s girlfriend, Ana; and Juan’s girlfriend, Vivian.
Carla jokes, “Juan’s girlfriend works here — he fires her at least three times a day.”
Juan shrugs. “Before my first cup of coffee, I’ve gotta fire her.”
“He doesn’t have firing authority,” Carla says.
The tight-knit family creates a lively aura in the shop, hosting unique events for the community. During “Pot & Sip,” aspiring plant parents make their own terrariums while drinking wine. Other days, the Durans don white coats and scribble on prescription notepads for the “Plant ER,” where people bring weakening plants for check-ups.
Perhaps the biggest symbol of community? The pool table in the back of the shop. They recently hosted a pool tournament, where challengers battled it out for a 10-inch monstera.
In late summer, a second store will root in Florida’s South Beach. The siblings will take turns flying there to operate the new venture. Eventually, they’ll train Florida locals to run it full-time. After all, there’s the family rule: No one is allowed to move more than 50 miles away.
“We love it here,” Cesar insists. “This is our home; this is always gonna be our flagship store, even if we opened up like 10 locations. It’s like our baby.”
When the Durans selected a shop name, they knew two things. They wanted a Spanish word, and they wanted it to mean something to them. After sifting through ideas, they settled on semilla — the Spanish word for “seed.”
Carla recalls the Spanish saying, “Hoy semillas, mañana flores,” which translates to “Seeds today, flowers tomorrow.” Carla says that’s the goal of Semilla: to create a beautiful future for everyone.
“We just felt like the concept of Semilla was really cool,” Cesar says. “It’s like us planting our seed in the community that’s gonna grow, and help the community grow as well.”