Florists Push Petals To The Metal Racing To Beat The Holiday Rush The Valentine’s Rush, That Is

While North Idaho winters send people scrambling for parkas and snow boots, employees at Hughes Florist are tending roses in short sleeves and cutoffs.

They work in eternal spring under the protective dome of an 80,000-square-foot greenhouse. Kept bright by a mixture of natural light and high-intensity overhead lamps, the greenhouse is a madhouse in mid-December, as the clock ticks down to the next big holiday.

Not Christmas - all the attention at Hughes Florist these days is focused on Valentine’s Day.

As both a rose grower and retail florist, owner Howard Hughes sends out up to 50,000 roses on that day alone. And work done now is crucial to keeping customers happy on Valentine’s Day.

This year, Hughes hopes to end the traditional lull in January sales by capitalizing on the Washington State University Cougars’ trip to the Rose Bowl.

“I’m a staunch supporter of Cougardom,” said Hughes, who graduated from WSU with a master’s degree in horticulture. “We’ll have plenty of roses available for everybody’s Cougar Rose Bowl celebration.”

Although he’ll pick up some business from both Christmas and the Cougars, Hughes has his workers preparing now for his biggest harvest of the year in February.

“Whatever we set in the next 10 days is what we’ll have for Valentine’s Day,” he said. Hughes “sets” a rose by cutting a bud away with his Swiss Army knife to leave a clean stem behind.

Within eight weeks, the stem will bear a mature flower, ready to join a daily harvest of more than 2,000 roses.

The greenhouse complex spans two blocks on the south side of the Spokane River and dates to when Hughes’ maternal grandparents bought the operation in 1916. His parents, Mary and “Hughie” Hughes, took over the business in 1944. Howard and Marcia Hughes became the owners 21 years ago.

Along with the family connections, some Post Falls history has found a place among the roses, as well.

“It’s like a time machine in here,” Hughes said. “Those greenhouses there were built in 1936. Part of that old shed was built from pieces of the old Frederick Post house.

“There are some of his square nails in those window casings,” he continued, clomping across the planked, wooden floor of what once doubled as a production area and retail flower shop.

Coming out the other side, Hughes led the way through a separate greenhouse, this one filled with roses growing in buckets and fed by a watering system controlling the nutrients that are a constant diet for each plant. Approximately 20 percent of the 48,000 rose bushes have been converted to the new hydroponic system. The remainder will be transferred from the soil and into buckets over the next five years.

The reason, Hughes said, is improved harvests and the need to produce large-headed roses like the ones coming out of his competitors’ greenhouses in South America and Canada.

“Tastes are changing,” the grower said. “I figure it’s the ‘wow factor’ - the first impression people have when they see the bigger roses.”

The stems, too, have grown longer, measuring about 22 inches.

“Ten years ago, the average length was probably 16 to 18 inches,” Hughes said.

It takes the industry between two and five years to retool for changes in consumer habits. But with as much as 70 percent of the greenhouse business taking place outside U.S. borders, domestic rose growers have little choice but to update their operations.

“We’re losing quickly,” Hughes said. “If we’re going to be one of the rose growers that survives, we need to get larger, long-stem roses into production. So we’re changing our techniques.”

The emergence of women as rose buyers has spurred another change.

In the past, Hughes dedicated 75 percent of his harvest to red roses, which men purchased almost exclusively. He is shifting production to about 50 percent red, adding yellows, pinks, lavenders and fuchsias to the floral mix as women request more color in bouquets they buy for themselves.

Hughes, who recently was elected president of the Post Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, keeps about 20 people working full-time throughout the year. According to the owner, they enjoy the controlled climate during the winter and have developed hides that are almost impervious to thorns.

“You don’t notice ‘em,” Hughes said. “A lot of my crew run around in shorts while they’re cutting roses.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo