Working at Little Prince of Oregon

If you’d told me several years ago that in the future I’d be working full-time as a member of a growing team at a wholesale plant nursery I would have likely asked you what drug you were on. While this might seem like a crude response to some readers, it’s honest. Even now that I’m actually doing it, I still find it difficult to grasp. But it’s been a few months, and I’m beginning to feel more comfortable.

Knowing how difficult full-time employment has been for me during my entire adult life due to my health, I’ve waited for months to write about my new job. I’ve been afraid that I’d fail, have to leave, or just give up. Looks like I’m a keeper though. They still let me clock in for my shifts lol. I think I’ve done pretty well to be honest. I show up when I’m scheduled and I know I’m trying hard to learn what I don’t yet know.

A few weeks ago my friend Loree came for a visit and wrote this sweet post about it. I was relieved to have her write about my work there before I did. For me, this is definitely a whole new professional phase in my life. It was nice to see how she framed it.

The growing team is young, and I am not. A lot of what I’ve been doing is physical. For the most part, that’s good for me, but I must confess, I did have to give up a day. I was not able to recover enough with only 2 days off, and am hoping I can add a day back on after I build up a bit more strength and do what my physical therapist says. Paying down debts, while building a more comfortable life with personal autonomy feels amazing.

Poco a poco as we say at work. I’m going to keep at this…

Currently I’m an Assistant Propagator and a Growing Assistant. I work on special propagation projects, and only recently I was assigned two houses. One is full of ferns, the other has ferns, native ground covers, and hardy begonias.

Most of our Growing Assistants have a lot more houses than I do, but since I can be pulled to do various other things… Pivot. Pivot. Pivot. Being flexible and organized is key to getting things done.

My employment at Little Prince began in March of 2024 while I was still a student. At that time, I was hired to help with the Winter Jewels® hellebores. After that was done and we harvested the seeds, I was assigned other propagation tasks as needed. By doing all of this, I completed the two required Cooperative Work Experience internships required for my horticulture degree at Clackamas Community College.

For a period of time I worked two days a week, but in September of 2025 I had my last day at Secret Garden Growers. The exit was anticlimactic. Pat was gone on a trip, and then I had COVID and had to basically take an unwanted COVID vacation. I’d wanted a last meal together with my coworkers or something, but it just was not in the cards. My time there was very special though, and I am beyond thankful for everything I learned from Pat. She’s a gem of a plantswoman, designer, nurserywoman, and person.

Leaving the specialty nursery world meant leaving a safe space behind. I got my start there, and am happy now to return to it when I can to shop for my own garden. But it also really hasn’t left me at all. Many of my close friends are still submerged in it.

The fun thing for me is to remember that Evan was also there when we bloggers visited Little Prince in April of 2017. The branded sippy cup they gave us at some point is still one I use.

Oh how far we’ve come, and what a great group of people to have had so many adventures with over the years…

Changing work worlds has been huge though. I’m more specific and specialized now, and the sense of community is much different. I don’t work directly as much with others, so have listened to thousands of hours of books and music. I don’t have any contact really with customers unless they’re friends coming to pick up, and I work speaking Spanish a lot. I do miss spending my days talking at great length about growing the plants out. But on the other hand, I’m working a lot more with plant science, what it means to grow plants well in containers in the nursery environment.

In all honesty, I really wanted to do this, so, here I am. I’m in a teaching and learning rich environment right now. It’s just very different than the teaching and learning rich environments I was in before.

And lastly, what I’m not sharing a lot about are my coworkers. I’m doing this for their privacy, and out of respect for them. They are amazing, and most (but not all) are primarily Spanish speakers.

While I’m challenged by them in various cultural ways, they reconnect me to speaking Spanish, and to my memories of teaching ESL in the community, helping many years ago to teach women from many cultures and nations that it’s safe to call the police if they need help. And I’m reminded of my failure to complete the Master’s in TESOL that I started at PSU, but that was long ago…

A month or two ago a large group of ladies was planting tissue culture plants into plug trays in the same house with me while I was sowing seeds or sticking cuttings. I don’t recall. I listened to them talk, and every so often they’d ask me things to get to know me, and to include me. I told them that I wrote on the internet, and gave talks, and asked if they wanted me to include them, to talk about them. I’d asked this one time before, and the response was the same. They very much want me to talk about them, but I am uncomfortable doing that—especially now.

So keep in mind that to write now about work is not the same without including them somehow—and I don’t know how to do it.

What I will say is that they work hard, many have more experience doing nursery work of all kinds than I do, but I am respected for being older, and they seem to find me funny.

I work much less with the men, and have not asked them about any of this. I suspect they’d not be as interested, but I could be wrong.

I do live in a bit of a bubble at work. I don’t have as much free time when I’m not working, and this holiday season I spent a lot of time rearranging my home so I could continue to study and dig deeper into being the best employee possible.

Again, it feels very solitary, but I’m adjusting.

And I thought long and hard about this post, probably too long and way too hard. I spent time thinking about Loree and Evan, and how they’ve been great friends over the years. I have to thank Alexa for taking this photo of the three of us just over two years ago in December of 2023 when we were invited out to shop at Little Prince.

Here are three plantspeople with an incredibly wide range of knowledge and growing experience. For some reason I deeply appreciate that right now more than ever. We’ve all be through a lot.

This was also just about when Alexa began to discuss the possibility of a job for me at Little Prince to fulfill my internship requirement.

And I’m so glad she did.