By Reid Forgrave
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ron Robben (left) and Kim Robben-King (right) with their dad George Robben amid the pansies at Robben Florist & Greenhouses in Delhi Township. (Glen Hartong photo)

DELHI TWP. - The bird man has no plans to leave his roost.

Everyone knows George Robben as the bird man here. Kids come into the Robben Florist & Greenhouses near St. Dominic Church and ask for the man with a bird on his head.

"They say, 'Is he alive?' " laughs Robben, who sports a mesh hat with a tiny robin glued to the top. "I say, 'Sure I'm alive!' Ha!"

So is the business his father built here in 1931 - but today it is part of a dwindling universe of family-owned greenhouses. Today, growers compete with retail stores that buy from Canada, which subsidizes flower growers, or South America, where labor is cheap.

In Delhi Township, which touts itself as the "Floral Paradise of Ohio," greenhouses have disappeared at a steady rate over the decades, dropping from about 60 family-owned greenhouses in the World War II era to fewer than 10 now.

But the businesses that remain - like Robben's greenhouse, or the west-side landmark R.C. Witterstaetter & Sons, founded by the "Carnation King" - exhibit a steadfast resolve to survive.

"It's getting tougher and tougher to do business," says Dan Witterstaetter, president of the Cincinnati Flower Growers Association and third-generation owner of the Witterstaetter business. "It's just becoming too much hassle for a lot of people, tougher and tougher to make it. And we might lose one or two more greenhouses the next few years, but most of these are definitely going to be around for a while."

History of flowers here

Farming under glass used to be the livelihood of thousands of west siders.

In the 1870s, realizing petunias bring more profit more than potatoes, many Delhi Township farmers started growing flowers. In the 1920s, they built glass greenhouses on hundreds of acres.

Growers would haul their wares to the nation's largest market dedicated solely to flowers, the Jabez Elliott Flower Market on Sixth Street downtown, at the current site of the Alfred B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center.

In the 1960s, more than 40 family-owned greenhouses operated here.

Then came suburbanization, and developers scooped up much of the valuable greenhouse land.

And the difficult labor - growers work from 4:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. through much of the spring - makes it tough to talk their heirs into taking up the family business.

The heavy workload, greenhouse owners say, isn't the only thing that makes the younger generation shy away from the trade. It's tough to make a buck these days, with heavy competition from Canada and from south of the border. Rising fuel costs have hurt greenhouses, too.

"The fact that out in Delhi there's still a greenhouse that has its own row of locally grown snapdragons, that's pretty impressive," said Dan Hurley, a Cincinnati historian who produced a video about the history of greenhouses on the west side.

Passing on the tradition

Inside the Robben greenhouse on a cold February day, it's easy to see why these greenhouse owners want to carry on the tradition.

In this tropical enclave, the sweet smell of blossoming buds mixes in the humid air with the smell of damp soil. Snapdragons tower several feet in the air. Alstromeria sit in bunches. Christmas poinsettias are already being prepared.

Here, spring blooms eternal.

In winter, customers walk around the greenhouse, breathe the air and poke through 50,000 square feet of soon-to-bloom plants. They sit on benches, sipping coffee and communing with nature.

Greenhouse owners show their kids they're not just growing flowers - they're growing happiness. That's how they encourage their kids to carry on the family business.

Bob Maddux, owner of Delhi Flower and Garden Center, has a son and daughter in the family business. He's working on his grandson now.

"You start them with the fun stuff like driving on the forklift," Maddux says. "You get them playing in the dirt and they're hooked."

Their future lies in the family atmosphere that you can't get at a big-box retailer.

"People want that personal experience," said Kathy Benken, owner of H. J. Benken Florist and Greenhouse in Silverton and president of the Ohio Florists' Assocation. "You find that at your local garden center, your local hardware store, your local pharmacy ... If more people understood what's involved in these family businesses and their contributions to the community, they'd think twice about shopping at the big boxes."

At the home of the bird man, Ron Robben is already working on the fourth generation.

"I told my boy, who is 7, that in another year he'll start pulling weeds," Ron Robben said. "And I told my daughter, who is 12, that next year she's going to learn how to stock the shelves. I still love getting my hands dirty in this, and I hope my kids will, too."

"Under Glass: The Greenhouses of Western Hills" is a national award-winning, 15-minute video produced in 2000 by the Delhi Historical Society that looks at the history of flower growing in the "Floral Paradise of Ohio."

For a copy of the video, send a check for $13.10, made out to the Delhi Historical Society, to: Delhi Historical Society, 468 Anderson Ferry Road, Cincinnati, OH 45238

For more information, call the historical society at 451-4313 or log on to www.delhihistoricalsociety.org.

E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com