One of the highlights of my Easter trip to Portland was a visit to Little Prince of Oregon, a wholesale nursery in Aurora, south of Portland. Their plants are in garden centers and retail nurseries all over the West Coast, easily recognizable by their colorful plant tags featuring a crowned frog:
Usually wholesale operations aren’t set up for visitors, especially for Joe Blows like myself, but Loree worked her magic and arranged for a tour with production manager Mike Hicks and propagation assistant Ann Amato (who is also a personal friend of both of us). For most people, visiting a wholesale nursery would be the very definition of boring — lots and lots of plants, mostly small, crammed together on tables or the floor. But for plant nerds, it’s like getting to see the inner workings of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
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| Living Little Prince sign — a perfect use for sempervivums |
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| (Left to right) Production manager Mike Hicks, yours truly, Ann, and Max from Oakland (see his and his husband Justin’s garden here). Photo courtesy of Loree. |
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| Close-up of the letter C |
Little Prince of Oregon (LPO) was founded in 1997 by Ketch de Kanter and his friend Brett Francis. The name itself goes back to de Kanter’s childhood; his father often joked that Ketch’s mother treated him like a “little prince,” and the nickname stuck.
What started as a modest operation heavy on common landscape shrubs and groundcovers has evolved over nearly 30 years into an impressive business with almost 100 greenhouses covering over 175,000 square feet, including a new 14,400 sq. ft. production facility completed in early 2025. In 2024, LPO was honored as the
Operation of the Year by Greenhouse Grower magazine, underscoring its status as an industry leader.
The days of boring landscape shrubs are long gone. Today, LPO is known for growing plants that customers cannot find elsewhere, over 1,500 different varieties in total. This includes 16 separate product lines, each with a witty name like Fit for a King (rare and unusual pants), Lords of the Fly (carnivorous plants), Little Prince of Darkness (dark-leafed plants), Prince of Paradise (tropical accent plants), Blades of Glory (ornamental grasses), Cliff Hangers (trailing plants for walls or containers), FootPrints (groundcovers that tolerate foot traffic), and Beau Château (sophisticated house plants). The nursery emphasizes a rigorous integrated pest management (IPM) program using beneficial organisms and biological controls like predatory insects to produce healthy, sustainable plants and reduce reliance on traditional chemical controls.
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| Seven of the 99 greenhouses |
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| The clouds were glorious |
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| If I ever own acreage, I want a utility vehicle like this |
The first greenhouse we visited was the fern house, tended by Ann. I love ferns, and I’ve always envied gardeners in more moderate climates who can grow them with ease. Fortunately, Little Prince of Oregon grows several dryland ferns that should do well in my climate, like
Cheilanthes lanosa,
Cheilanthes argentea, Cheilanthes sieberi (actually
C. distans), and
Anemia mexicana.
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| Loree and Mike in deep conversation, no doubt about ferns |
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| Max, me (turned away), Ann, and Mike (photo courtesy of Loree) |
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| See the hoses on the ground? Everything is watered by hand. This allows for better monitoring and more precise care than automated systems. |
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| The German in me loves the orderly way the plant tags were lined up |
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| Silver cloak fern (Cheilanthes argentea), a dryland fern I can grow |
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| Poison rock fern (Cheilanthes sieberi); I have no idea why it’s called that, but it handles dry conditions well and will soon be growing in my garden |
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| Japanese painted fern (Athyrium nipponicum), can’t remember which cultivar, but I can’t grow it anyway |
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| Wood fern (Dryopteris sp.), LPO has 14 different kinds |
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| Mexican flowering fern (Anemia mexicana). I hadn’t heard of it before, but I’m going to try it my garden. |
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| Trumpet pitchers (Sarracenia sp.) should theoretically grow in my climate, but I don’t want to be responsible for plants that need to be kept moist at all times |
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| Assorted butterworts (Pinguicula sp.). They look so cool, but I know that trying to grow them would only lead to heartbreak. |
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| Butterwort cultivar |
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Pinguicula cyclosecta...
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| ...looking almost otherworldly |
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| Planter Poppers, “Mix -n- Match to design your own planter” |
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| Even though it looks like a fern, it’s not. It’s a club moss (Selaginella sp.). |
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| It spreads vigorously via its threadlike red stolons. It likes water, so it wouldn’t get very far in my garden. |
The LPO website lists
23 different begonias, but there are more in the greenhouses that haven’t made it onto the website yet. I love begonias for their variety of color and leaf shape, but they aren’t the easiest to grow in a dry-summer climate — and most of them hate winter cold.
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| Begonias... |
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| ...so... |
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| ...many... |
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| ...begonias! |
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| One of the strangest begonias I’ve ever seen, Begonia ferox. The leaf surface is covered with pointy spikes that look fierce but really aren’t. |
As luck would have it, LPO introduced an indoor plant line roughly 18 months before COVID-19 hit, positioning them perfectly for the subsequent boom. As people stayed home during the pandemic, interest in houseplants skyrocketed, causing LPO to invest even more heavily to meet the intense demand for tropicals and succulents. In March 2020, when many retail stores were forced to close, LPO launched a program allowing retailers to sell directly from the LPO online inventory, with garden centers receiving 20% of the sale.
Predictably, demand for houseplants declined after the pandemic, but LPO is still growing a good selection of plants that stand out from the typical offerings you see.
Production manager Mike Hicks is a true plant nerd. Instead of simply growing more of what sells well, he takes chances and brings in plants most buyers haven’t seen before. Good examples are these two new aeonium introductions. I’ve seen many aeoniums, but I’ve never seen any quite like these. Hopefully they’ll make it into retail channels soon.
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| Aeonium ‘Wheels of Fascination’ |
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| Aeonium ‘Wheels of Fascination’ |
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| Aeonium ‘Wheels of Captivation’ |
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| Aeonium ‘Wheels of Captivation’ |
I love seeing the patterns formed by hundreds of plants, all with tags oriented in the same direction:
My favorite part of our visit came toward the end when we entered this room. This is LPO’s plant tag library. Each cardboard box contains labels for a specific plant variety. So many plant tags. Can you even imagine? If we’d had more time, I would have taken a much closer look. What can I say, I love tags.
Thousands upon thousands of plastic pots waiting to be filled:
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At the end of our tour, Mike showed us how cuttings and seedlings are placed in pots:
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| A hopper dispenses the soil mix into pots within a tray. A brush levels the soil, ensuring the density is consistent across all pots. |
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| A mechanical plate with pegs (a “dibbler”) presses down to create a uniform hole in the center of the soil |
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| One cutting or seedling is placed in each hole; after that, a plant tag is inserted in each pot |
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| The trays with the filled and labeled pots are loaded onto carts for transport to the greenhouses |
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| In the shipping department, rolling racks with plant orders are waiting to be loaded onto delivery trucks or picked up by customers |
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| A typical order |
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| Little Prince also sells variety packs of succulents, 32 to a flat with 8 different varieties |
Here are some interesting articles on Little Prince of Oregon if you want to learn more:
LPO production manager Mike Hicks and his wife Megan Big John, also a horticultural professional, are plant lovers of the highest order and have created a spectacular garden at their home in West Lin, Oregon. Check out these videos by Donna Avallone of
Over the Fence and Loree’s blog post:
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