MADRAS – John Crisp says he’s dreamed of running his own plant nursery since he was a kid in Texas, where his father and grandfather both grew thousands of plants in their own greenhouses.

Crisp spent years working for his dad and then managing a nursery in Junction City, Ore., before he decided to strike out on his own. His dream came true six months ago when he opened Cascade Greenhouses off a dusty farm road just south of Madras.

He said he chose Central Oregon because the land was cheap and the area didn’t have a nursery dedicated to selling plants wholesale. Most plant nurseries here also sell directly to consumers, a practice that can interfere with nurseries’ wholesale business, Crisp said.

As a result, many retailers were buying plants from nurseries in Western Oregon, despite the fact that customers tend to prefer locally grown plants that are better adapted to Central Oregon’s environment, Crisp said.

So Crisp bought a patch of farmland, built seven large greenhouses and filled them with hundreds of varieties of plants, with some help from his father, also named John. Crisp also is assisted by his wife, Judy, who handles accounting, and daughter, Courtney, 17, who works in the nursery.

Cascade Greenhouses is young, but the business is in full bloom.

Richard Avila of nearby organic tomato farm Country Vines predicted that Crisp’s plant and flower nursery will fill a niche in rapidly growing Central Oregon. Early returns seem to support that – the plant and flower nursery already has found customers at lawn and garden stores across Central Oregon, The Dalles and Portland, Crisp said.

How many plants do you have in your greenhouses right now?

We’ve probably got 80,000 individual plants.

Tell me about your greenhouses.

We have high-frequency heaters in the back and horizontal airflow fans to move the heat around and keep it from accumulating near the ceiling and not circulating where the plants are. We’ve got an overhead hose system to keep from dragging hoses on the plants.

They’re not the cheapest greenhouses you can buy, but they’re definitely not high-end, like we’d like to have someday. But, to start with, this is the minimum that you need to get the job done and grow plants.

Do you have any competitors?

Most of the people in this area, a lot of them do both retail and wholesale. Most of our customers said they really prefer to buy from someone who’s just wholesale. They don’t feel like: ‘He’s holding back his best stuff for his customers who he wants to serve and then sending us his seconds;’ or, ‘we’re not getting top-notch service.’

How has the startup gone?

It was good. I had a lot of help from my dad; he came up from Texas. I grew up in the greenhouse biz with him in (Texas) and my grandfather was also in the greenhouse business in Texas. He came up just after we purchased the property. And he spent a couple of months with us helping us get started and putting up the greenhouses.

What did your grandfather grow?

A lot of the same things. There’s not a lot of truly new plants. There’ve been a lot of breeding changes and things like that, but pretty much the genera’s been around forever and they’re not creating new genera. All the stuff that you see and take for granted today, they were around back then, it was just different forms.

But their genetics, their breeding is more modern; with all of the crops we produce today, it’s changing rapidly. The plant performance is getting better, for the grower and for the consumer.

A lot of times, it’s new colors. Take pansies, for example. There’s new flower shapes and colors.

Like these cascading petunias over here. We’ve always had petunias, but they developed different habits that are a little bit more appropriate for hanging.

There’s tremendous work being done in breeding.

What’s your biggest seller right now?

Our biggest seller right now is probably mums. We’ve got several houses of them, but they’re all mums. They’re just starting to crack open (their blossoms). A lot of the nurseries prefer them when they’re like this because they’ve got a longer shelf life. If they buy them when they’re already wide-open, then they’re too far gone.

How many mums do you have?

Right now we’ve probably got 7,000.

So, as a plant professional, what’s the key to having good-looking plants?

Soil and fertilizer are probably the two biggest things that make good plants. Having a good handle on your soil and feed program, that’s probably the biggest thing. A lot of that just comes – we use a soil and plant laboratory to help develop our feed program and customize it to our water that we have here.

It all has to be kind of tailored to what you’re dealing with to start with. Being consistent and finding a soil mix that works for you so it’s the same every time. There’s lots of other factors, but none of those really matter if you don’t start out with a great feed.

The Basics

What: Cascade Greenhouses

Who: John Crisp, owner

Where: 5140 SW Bear Dr., Madras

Telephone: 541-546-2600

Employees: 3-16, depending on the season.