The Greenhouse Odyssey: Two-Mowed Down
By Lorraine Miller
Faster than I could say “I quit,” my life changed from a sterile science lab to a living, breathing new world of tropical plants.
The huge shop windows faced east and south and the sunshine poured in. I was in a space/time warp, sometimes feeling like an escape artist or a freedom rider but, certainly not like an entrepreneur.
It took a while before memories of my father’s business became familiar. When he returned from Europe at the end of WW2, he started a printing business. My parents had five children and as kids, we all worked in the shop. There was a certain mystique about it, a child’s pride in being part of a family endeavor. I’m sure Dad’s employees didn’t sign up for babysitting but to me, they were like a second family.
After dinner, Dad would ask, “anybody want to drive down to the shop with me and make sure the lights are out?”
Or on Saturday morning, “who wants to go to the post office with me?”
He was tending his business, making sure it was okay, just like it had a life of its own.
Was it nature or nurture that four of us became business owners?
Dad’s business grew at a pony clip. He constantly needed more space for a new offset press or a fancy folding machine. His father, Grandpa Miller, was a brick mason and came to town every 2 or 3 years to add or tear down a wall. It was chaotic; deliveries and cinderblocks dodging each other, the racket of the Heidelberg Press competing with the churn of the cement mixer. There were times when you couldn’t get in or out of the doors.
Cactus and Tropicals grew in a similar, seemingly haphazard way, sporadically adding a new greenhouse or more parking.
In the midst of it all, Dad would phone, “Lorraine, are you busy?” “Yes, Dad’” I’d answer. “Really busy.” He’d ask, “Yeah, but are you making any money?”
Therein lies the rub! My father didn’t give me a precise model for running a business but looking back, I see that ‘Forge Ahead’ was his unspoken motto.
It sure spoke to me. Sometime in the very near future, the business would make money.
My first responsibility was to learn everything I could about plants. I took a deep dive into horticulture and ornamental plant books. I discovered the Bible of tropical plants, the Exotica by Alfred Byrd Graf. It’s a pictorial encyclopedia just shy of 2,000 pages and weighing in at 5.5 lbs. Every plant has a photograph, a description, habitat info and care instructions. With the aid of the Exotica, I attached a handwritten card to each plant giving its name and care requirements. Sadly, the Exotica is out of print and difficult to find.
I read Thalassa Cruso’s Making Things Grow: A Practical Guide for the Indoor Gardner. There were few pictures, but advice that made common sense. She explained why you shouldn’t get water on the leaves of an African Violet or what to do about the dilemma of a shrinking root ball.
I was curious too, about the history of houseplants given that in the wild, tropical plants don’t grow in containers. I wondered who and how plants or seeds were collected and how it was established they could even live in a pot.
Turns out, archeologists have found signs of container gardening dating back to 5,000 B.C. All I had to do was reintroduce them to the modern world.
I wasn’t into Botanical Latin, medicinal and herbal plants, the healthful benefits of houseplants, soil, insects, pesticides, fertilizer, cactus or photosynthesis. Not yet.
While I was earnestly studying houseplants, I was also spending money and taking money to the bank. I needed bookkeeping skills. I took advantage of a program offered by the Small Business Administration called SCORE - Service Corps of Retired Executives.
My 75 yr. old mentor was a woman from New Jersey whose life’s work had been the comptroller of a large nuts and bolts factory. (Keep in mind, computers were a thing of the future). Mrs. Worth rode the bus to my shop every other Wednesday for 2 months. She brought me a 14 Column Ledger Book and showed me how to label the horizontal and vertical columns, enter and extend totals and double check my numbers. Sometimes I called her ‘Mrs. ToThePenny.’
After all, a misplaced decimal could be the difference between a dime and a dollar - or more! She insisted on a sharp #2 pencil. She was opposed to the column heading ‘Miscellaneous.’
Mrs. Worth taught me everything I needed to know, at least for the time being. I didn’t suffer the common problems of boredom or procrastination with bookkeeping. At the end of the month, I studied the column totals like they were a scoreboard or a prophecy.
I liked helping customers. People often came in with a preconceived notion of the plant they wanted or where they wanted to put it, whether on a table top or on the floor, tall or bushy, hanging or crawling. Others just wanted a plant that grabbed them, something beautiful or interesting.
My job was to help them find it and give care instructions. Buying a houseplant is not like mindlessly dashing into the grocery store for a gallon of milk. Buying a houseplant is a sensory, soulful thing, a ‘be here now’ moment. It should be stress free and fun. I wanted my customers to be successful growing plants. I wanted them to come back.
One day a customer explained she was having a small gathering that night and she worried her living room felt sterile. She wanted to warm it up with a tall, green plant. She described the light in the room. The windows were north facing, too dark for a Ficus but, just right for a Dracaena (a native of Madagascar). She picked out a 6’ tall Dracaena marginata, a plant with dark green leaves with red edges or margins.
I could feel her excitement. After she paid, I carried the plant out, but there were only 2 cars in the parking lot, a Volkswagon beetle and my Volkswagon van.
“How are you going to get this home?” I asked.
“I’m just going to open my sunroof and put the plant on the seat. The top can poke out,” she said.
“But 3’ of the plant will be in cold wind,” I said. “By the time you get home, the top will be frozen or bare-naked.”
I reached in my pocket and took out the van keys. “Take it home in my car. Bring it back if you don’t like it.”
She was back in an hour to swap out my van for her bug but, the Dracaena stayed at her house.
I suppose some business-savvy person might have looked at my numbers, patted me on the head and walked away with a sigh. But I wasn’t walking. I was cramming, cramming to be an entrepreneur.
Besides learning about plants and the rudiments of bookkeeping, I had to be an advertising agent, janitor, buyer, sales force, delivery driver and complaint department. I was grasping at a fantasy: Can I shape my own destiny? At the very least, have a hand in it? I didn’t fully appreciate such constructs as serendipity, luck, providence, chance, coincidence, fate, timing, foreshadowing or lemons. Not yet.
Near the end of the shop’s 3rd year, I received a certified letter from the Salt Lake Board of Education. The junior high next to the shop was being demolished and rebuilt. The home of the Grass Menagerie was being taken through Eminent Domain.* I had 6 months to get out.
*Eminent Domain: “the power of a government entity to take private property for a public use without the owner’s consent, conditioned upon payment of just compensation.”