The business of plants has been bloomin' in Ravenna for years

Originally published Saturday, December 6, 1997

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Louis Javete was a federal forester with his head in the treetops before he got down on his hands and knees and smelled the flowers.

Fifty-odd years ago, Javete came out of the woods and bought into a wild and crazy dream of running a small nursery and flower shop on an unpaved street just outside the Seattle city limits.

Today, a silver-haired Javete, 86, and his wife, Nancy, and one of their sons, Harold, 27, own and run Saxe Floral and Greenhouses on Northeast 65th Street in Ravenna.

"I minored in botany when I took my degree in forestry from Oregon State University," said the elder Javete. "So when I learned that old 'Doc' Saxe wanted to maybe retire and sell, I began working here. I told him I wanted to learn the business from the ground up." That was back in 1947. Javete became manager in short order and eventually bought the business after Saxe died.

The greenhouse operation that now seems tucked away in a residential neighborhood was an isolated wholesale fern nursery started by a Japanese family back in the 1920s, Javete said. It covered more ground then -- all the way up to Northeast 68th Street.

It's now well within the northern city limits, and well within the Javete family's way of doing things, even though they left the Saxe name on the business. Javete took the small shop and three greenhouses developed by Dr. J.N. Saxe, a downtown dentist, and grew it into a nationally known floral operation.

"Those big floral tubs and baskets you see all over Leavenworth and University Village and other places . . . they're ours. We started them years back and I think we still do the best ones!" said Javete, who says he still works "maybe half-days."

In this business, half-days can be 8 hours, Monday-to-Monday, in the busy spring and early summer growing season.

"We're pretty much like farmers," explained Harold, who with his brother Louis Jr., worked here through high school and college. One of their sisters, Annette Mudarri, still delivers for the family business. Harold came back into the business several years ago, after graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in finance and working several years in a different growing business: retail coffee.

The Javete greenhouses -- there are now seven, covering much of the land from Northeast 65th between 24th and 25th avenues Northeast -- are where the Javetes grow their own specialty geraniums, mums, lobelia, petunia, wax begonia, impatiens, ranunculus and other popular varieties. Some of the primroses will be ready for your home by February.

Right now -- even as some of the greenhouses, the outdoor covered courtyards and the shop areas are filling with brilliant poinsettias -- the steam-heated greenhouses out back are nurturing several varieties of next year's primroses and ranunculus, as well as left-over geraniums that will be giant specimens by next spring.

The floral and gift shop at the front were developed even further by Nancy, who expanded the offerings to Waterford crystal and Royal Dalton, Spode and other fine china lines. The path from the shop and store up front leads back through one of the older glass greenhouses, where displays change with the seasons. The huge selection of houseplants has been usurped by holiday arrangements and displays. Along the way, you might be greeted by Charlotte, the gentle giant Newfoundland/Labrador retriever.

Louis still retains the fecund enthusiasm for flowers and plants that sustained him in those first years as a nurseryman.

"You gotta see this," he said, veering toward a huge potted shrub on one side of a greenhouse. "This is a night-blooming cereus, from Mexico. It has some of the most beautiful blossoms you'll ever see, or smell, but they only come out between about 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., then wither and fall off.

"The first time I was here late and saw them coming out, I ran over to the house and got my wife and one of our daughters out of bed to come see this. They're absolutely the most beautiful flower you'll ever see!"

And he's not locked into one tried-and-true way of doing business; he's always up for change.

"You have to anticipate changes in public taste," Javete said. "Years ago, no one would think of offering purple flowers in arrangements. And orange-colored flowers were another thing people just wouldn't think of not all that long ago.

"Harold convinced me last year to sell Christmas trees for the first time. We did so well that we're doubling our order this year: all Noble firs. And all displayed like this," he added, pointing to a beautiful tree suspended from a pergola's overhead beam with its butt resting in a big water container. "They stay much fresher, and you don't have to dig a tree out of a pile and hold it up to see how it looks," he boasted.

Quality plants and flowers and service have always been the Javete's small-business emphasis.

"Things have changed over the years, of course," said the elder Javete. "Mechanical seeding, potting and irrigation make it difficult to compete if you're a small operation. We used to start and grow 16,000 of our own mums.

"Then the completion of I-5 opened up the market for products from California, where they have the space and longer seasons. Produce trucks coming north began taking on florals. They brought in things like 19-cents-a-dozen daffodils and killed the local growers."

Nowadays, the Saxe operation stays alive and well with a wider variety of items -- largest houseplant variety in the city, Harold claims -- and they grow 'em bigger. "Everyone else offers 3- or 4-inch potted plants. We use 5-inch pots and offer larger specimens," he said, holding up next year's primrose.

Saxe Floral will grow and sell "about 100,000" potted plants every year, including 20,000 of their specialty geraniums, Louis said. The market for garden tools and accessories and fertilizers also has opened up with the demise of the large Ernst hardware and garden stores in this area. An old Saxe frame storehouse has been converted to a tool and garden accessory building.

They may be locked into a defined city neighborhood with no chance to expand, but Saxe Floral has deep Ravenna roots. A garden in the city.

Then again, that's what they're all about.

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.