As two sisters arranged flowers behind the counter of the Greenhouse Florist and Nursery on a recent morning, they reflected on more carefree days when they used to crawl around the floor as kids and hide inside boxes.
“Everybody here ended up in a floral box,” Chrystal Lagasse said. “Even the dogs.”
Lagasse and Nigell Hutson were raised around the Greenhouse Florist and Nursery in Oak Harbor similar to how their mother, Audrey Butler, was.
All three now work at the family business, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary with a holiday open house from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15.
Hutson’s daughter has worked at the store on occasion, marking four generations of family involvement.
“It’s awesome,” Hutson said. “It’s all we’ve ever known.”
Butler and her younger brother Henry Vanden Haak are co-owners of the florist and nursery business, embodying the lessons, traditions and work ethic instilled by their parents, who took over the business in 1954.
All of Tennis and Sylvia Vanden Haak’s five children were raised in the business, which started out on Midway Boulevard before moving to its present location on NE Seventh Avenue in 1980.
“From the day you were born to the day you started moving away,” Henry Vanden Haak said.
“You want to eat? You work. That’s the way we were raised.”
Henry Vanden Haak never left.
He’s had his “fingers in the dirt” all of his life, tending to the nursery end of the business.
Butler has carried on the floral aspect like her mother, leaving the business only during the five years her husband was still in the Navy.
“We’ve worked in the business all of our lives,” she said. “I started delivering when I was 16.”
Greenhouse Florist and Nursery has been operated by Butler and Vanden Haak since 1992 after other siblings moved on from the family business.
They’ve watched other longtime Oak Harbor businesses close after owners reached their retirement years and seen the economy and consumer habits change over the years.
They made the necessary adjustments once tough times hit and constantly try to plan ahead for what might be in the future.
The current staff of nine is less than half of what it once was when the nursery end of the business was particularly thriving in the late 1990s through the early 2000s.
Floral has been the steadiest, strongest aspect of the business over the years, Vanden Haak said.
“There’s going to be slow days and busy days,” he said. “You have to focus on down the road. If you’re worrying about what’s happening today, you’re not going to be there tomorrow.”
Butler said she’s grateful for the Oak Harbor community and it calls it a “passion and sense of duty” to serve and take care of customers who call on her business to express themselves to others.
She said she’s also blessed to have been raised in a strong family without conflicts.
She said that she and her brother work well together and have come up with a simple solution in writing should there be a disagreement in how to run the business.
“We flip a coin,” Butler said.
“And in all these years, we’ve never flipped a coin. I guess that’s a statement in itself.”
Still, there’s another possible explanation to the business’ longevity, Butler said.
“Dutch. Stubborn Dutch,” she said. “That’s built in us, too. We’ve very stubborn. We don’t give up too easily.”
(Below: The work ethic and business sense of former business owners Sylvia and Tennis Vanden Haak carried over to their children.)
Their parents emigrated from The Netherlands to the United States through Philadelphia in 1948 after World War II and went directly to the home of their sponsors in Oak Harbor.
Those sponsors were John and Audrey Bultman, owners of Whidbey Florist and Greenhouse on Midway Boulevard.
Tennis Vanden Haak immediately started working for the Bultmans, and he and his wife purchased the business from them in 1954, the same year they became U.S. citizens.
They passed the business onto their children when it changed its name and location in 1980.
Henry Vanden Haak said the store brings constant memories of his parents, who died barely a month a part from the other in the spring of 2011.
The business brings a lifetime of memories to the entire family, many that put a smile on Butler’s face.
Such as the time when Lagasse, now 31, found a box full of glitter when she was a toddler.
“She was 2, maybe 3,” Butler said. “It ended up all over the floor and in her mouth.
“It’s a classic picture.”
Open House
The Greenhouse Florist and Nursery is holding a Holiday Open House to celebrate 60 years in business from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15. The store is located at 555 NE Seventh Ave. in Oak Harbor. The open house, which includes a cake cutting at 1 p.m., is a chance to thank the community for its support. The store is being decorated in holiday fashion. There will be drawings, hot cider and staff on hand to answer questions about gardening and floral needs. A class titled “Working with fresh evergreens for the Holidays,” is scheduled from 2-4 p.m., Nov. 22, at the store. For more information, call 360-675-6668 or go to the website.
