When Tennis and Sylvia Van Den Haak emigrated from Holland to Whidbey Island in 1948, Oak Harbor boasted a population of 800. In 1954, when the Van Den Haaks opened the Greenhouse Florist and Nursery, Oak Harbor’s residents numbered just a few more. Fresh flowers came just once, maybe twice, a week by bus from Seattle. Any plants sold here were grown here.

In 2004, more than 20,000 people call Oak Harbor home and the Greenhouse continues to provide residents with fresh flowers that trucks bring daily. Some plants also arrive by wheel but the Van Den Haak family prides itself on growing many plants, from calla lilies to geraniums to birds of paradise.

As the business grew, so did the family. Today, Sylvia and Tennis spend the morning hours at the business on NE Seventh Avenue “helping.” It’s the kids who run the busy nursery, arranging flowers, coordinating weddings and anniversaries, advising gardeners on particulars of bonsai, bulbs and begonias.

“If a person spends $1.19 on a flower or $1,019 on a tree, we want them to be successful,” Audrey Van Den Haak Butler said. Since the beginning, the Greenhouse has given advice and information with every purchase. With that premise of education, “We have 50 years of satisfied customers,” Butler added

The availability and accessibility of flowers and plants have changed from the days of meeting a bus from Seattle and growing everything else.

“Today, we can serve people better and faster,” Butler said.

Technology has brought several big changes to the business.The switch from terra cotta pots to plastic ones made a difference in life at the nursery.

Terra cotta pots could be reused but only if they were perfectly clean.

When Butler was in school, cleaning terra cotta pots was one of the main chores for the Van Den Haak kids.

“Washing wasn’t too bad in summer, we had company, my brothers and sisters were with me,” Butler said. “But in winter …” she shuddered.

Butler has many pleasant memories of working in the family business. One involves color, the other sound.

Once a year, a vendor would come to take their order for arrangement accessories.

“I loved being called to look at what the ribbon man had and help place our order,” Butler said. His stock had everything from Christmas plaid taffetas to bright prints to richly textured brocades.

Butler loved listening to rain fall on the old greenhouse roof.

“Even now, when it rains I have to go listen in the greenhouse,” Butler said.

It’s the day-to-day details Butler remembers most vividly. The day the boiler that heated the greenhouses blew up. The days of relocating the business from one street to another. The day a brother died and the business had to keep going.

“When you are a family business, it’s milestones like these you remember,” she said.

Today, Greenhouse Florist and Nursery carries everything from fertilizer to landscape ready trees, tools or accessory. Decorators will delight in art — bugeyed frogs, stepping stones — to garden accessories — vases, tags, pebbles, gazing balls.

No matter what a person selects: a spade, rubber garden clogs, seeds, annuals or perennials, every purchase will come with advice and interest.

After 50 years, the third generation gets their green thumbs in the plant business.The Van Den Haak’s granddaugher Lisa is a vital part of today’s Greenhouse.