STANDARD, Alta. – One of Philippe d’Argent’s employees tapped on the door, stuck in her head and apologized for the interruption.
A customer from Calgary was at the greenhouse to buy plants, but wanted to leave them overnight until she could return with a bigger vehicle. The problem was the greenhouse had scant space and the employee wasn’t sure where they would store the customer’s purchases.
“It’s a fact?” d’Argent asked. “She’s already bought the plants?”
“No, she just walked in and wanted to know,” the employee replied. “But I said I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if we had the room.”
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“Say yes,” d’Argent replied without hesitation. “We’ll try to find the room somewhere.”
“So you’re going to make the space then?” the employee countered, making sure her boss realized this decision was going to be his responsibility.
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I will.”
It’s the kind of customer service d’Argent says is vital when operating a greenhouse 75 kilometres from Calgary’s large and lucrative population base.
Besides the lack of a close-by retail market, d’Argent and his family must also contend with a shortage of tradespeople such as electricians and plumbers, forcing them to do much of that work themselves.
But the first rural challenge d’Argent and his wife Ellen faced 30 years ago when they built their first greenhouse south of Standard was a lack of good quality water.
There was no dugout on their land and the well water was bad, forcing them in the early years to melt snow in an old cast iron cooking pot to water their plants. Eventually, the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration helped him dig a dugout and bring in water from an irrigation canal.
The isolation isn’t as bad as it might seem. D’Argent said many gardeners are perfectionists, looking for the perfect flower at the perfect stage.
“Those people are willing to drive long distances and make big sacrifices to get what they want.”
D’Argent is a long way from where he grew up, brought to this small farm in southern Alberta by a combination of illness and history.
His father owned a large estate in France that included several farms raising sheep, horse and cattle. One of them sold Charolais breeding stock to Canadian producers as part of the 1960s continental invasion.
In 1968, the young d’Argent visited Western Canada to tour the ranches that were buying his father’s cattle. Misfortune struck, however, when he became ill almost the moment he stepped off the airplane in Calgary with what was eventually diagnosed as brucellosis that he had picked up while working with a veterinarian in France.
The Canadian government imm-ediately quarantined him and confiscated his passport until he could pay the hospital bill.
But more misfortune struck, this time in the form of student riots in Paris that threatened to topple the government. The near-revolutionary conditions in France cut most communications with the country and d’Argent was unable to obtain money from his family.
The political crisis eventually settled down, communication was restored and d’Argent’s exile lifted. However, by then he had settled into his new life in Canada. He married the daughter of a prominent Alberta cattle breeder and the couple bought two quarters of farmland south of Standard.
They eventually began growing field vegetables, which required a greenhouse.
“Slowly, the demand was there for ornamentals and we went toward the ornamental flowers instead of vegetables. And no more field work.”
They continued to grow wheat, canola, barley and flax until the mid-1980s, when it became too difficult to do both. Today they rent out the farmland and concentrate solely on their company, A.V.B. Greenhouses.
They built their first greenhouse in 1973, a 21 x 96 foot primitive affair. The benches were built from the roof of a collapsed barn and the sawhorses were made from lumber salvaged from its walls.
Today, the company has 11/2 acres of greenhouse space on the farm near Standard and another half acre at nearby Rockyford, Alta., which son Eric will eventually operate on his own.
They began selling their flowers at local farmers’ markets, but today 90 percent of their plants are sold to municipalities, golf courses, hospitals, cemeteries and institutions such as the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary and the Calgary Zoo. Expansion plans are not in the works.
“The way we devote ourselves, there is only so much you can do. After a while, you’d stretch yourselves too thin and we wouldn’t be able to provide quality and services anymore.”
But retirement is also not in the cards.
“That is a lovely thought,” he said. “But it is impossible.”
He said all their income has been invested into the business, which doesn’t have enough assets to make selling worthwhile.
“I think it is the same thing as a chef or a barber. Can a barber sell his goodwill? I don’t think so.”
But 30 years in the greenhouse business has still had its rewards, especially the customers who have turned into friends.
“There is nothing nicer in life than trying to please a friend and be kind to them by offering your services,” he said.
