 | | Photo By Garrett Rudolph | | The Monniers, Debbie and Ron, turned a greenhouse hobby into a thriving fuchsia business as well as other plant life. |
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By Garrett Rudolph
Ron and Debbie Monnier have been interested in plants their entire lives.
"Debbie and I had always had a passion for plants," said Ron. "We just grew up with a passion for plants and we became really dangerous when we got married, because you had two people with the same kind of passion and then made the mistake of buying a greenhouse."
That initial "mistake" - a $50 purchase at a garage sale - eventually became Monnier's Country Gardens, which has evolved over the past 10 years to become one of the Mid-Willamette Valley's preeminent sites for fuchsias.
"We ended up with about 30 varieties, and started selling some to fund the hobby," said Ron. "The more we sold, the more we collected; the more we collected, the more we sold, and eventually we had to buy another greenhouse."
In 2002, Ron retired from Woodburn Fertilizer, to work on the nursery full-time, and over the course of that time, the Monniers' collection of fuchsias had grown from 30 varieties to 1,300.
Still, Ron wasn't completely satisfied selling other people's fuchsias. The logical next step was to begin creating his own - a process called hybridizing, which basically means cross-breeding different varieties of fuchsias to isolate traits the grower wants to emphasize, while drawing on the experience and knowledge of the parent plants.
"The ultimate goal is to get good, substantial landscape varieties that have large blossoms," said Ron. "That's what a lot of people are asking for and there just aren't a lot of them."
In attempting to develop a landscape variety of fuchsia, he ended up creating four hanging basket varieties, unique to Monnier's Country Gardens - the Madison Mae, the Tonii Nicole, the Chester Bridges, and a fourth, which is yet to be named - which are being released this spring for the first time ever, in a limited number.
One of the other traits Ron is looking for is hardiness, which is a plant's ability to re-grow every spring after freezing in the winter. It will still be several years before he determines whether this goal has been achieved. After three years of freezing and growing back, the plants are considered hardy.
While the newly-created hanging basket varieties have created some hype in the industry, Ron continues his attempt to develop a landscape variety, among a number of other hybridizing projects he is working on.
While 90 percent of Monnier's business revolves around fuchsias, they have branched out into the tropical and sub-tropical plants, as well.
Monnier's Country Gardens is located at 17049 Mountain View Lane N.E., in Woodburn. For more information, they can be contacted at 503-981-3384, or people can visit their Web site at www.monnierscountrygardens.com.
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