Navan’s family of green thumbs

Cleroux owns Elisabeth’s Garden (it’s named for his wife), a thriving greenhouse and market stall business at 4273 Navan Rd., just west of Navan. A recent spring day found Cleroux, sporting a tank top and sweat pants despite the mountains of snow outside, bustling around one of his eight steamy greenhouses.

He’d been up since 5 a.m. and would be on the go until well past dinnertime. And no matter how fast he worked – tending seedlings, hauling bags of peat moss around, paying the oil delivery fellow – Cleroux would clearly never get caught up. No matter: a reporter wants to talk to him about his greenhouses, and Cleroux drops everything to oblige. “I love to serve people,” says the rapid-fire gardener who’s already got a deep farmer’s tan thanks to countless hours under the greenhouses’ plastic covering. “I’ll see someone at St. Hubert’s and say, ‘Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?’ Then we remember, ‘Oh yeah, you bought those jalapeno peppers last year. How’d they do?’ It’s not just numbers for me; I like to explain things to people.”

Cleroux, 42, is no stranger to explaining things. He took over the operation from his father Aristide Cleroux five years ago, but has worked in these greenhouses since he was young.

And he’s proud of Elisabeth’s Garden. As we troop through one building after another, passing under hanging baskets of strawberry plants already in flower and stepping over thick black water hoses, Cleroux rattles off facts and figures. He has over 1,000 varieties of plants, everything from tomatoes to marigolds, virtually all grown on-site from seed – “it’s a brain game” remembering where everything is, says Cleroux. Fuel costs over $20,000 a year to keep the greenhouses between 20 and 25 degrees centigrade; if their temperature suddenly dips, even at 2 a.m., an alarm sets his ever-present cell phone ringing. Each greenhouse measures 2,500 sq. ft. And over seven people work in them off and on during busy periods, all but one of them family.

You could find unhealthier spots to work. The Cleroux gang, although their hands fly when working, seem relaxed and satisfied. Maybe the moist, oxygen-rich air has something to do with it: energizing, it’s simultaneously calming, and you can imagine pulling up a garden chair in here for a good snooze.

But these folks are working, not napping. Astoundingly to an outsider, each seedling is plucked by hand from a large starter flat holding up to 800 of them and transplanted to a smaller container to sell. You should return those containers to Elisabeth’s Garden for re-use, by the way: one of the greenhouses is jam-packed with returned flats and pots. “Hey, we have to do it for the ozone layer, right?” Cleroux asks, though it’s more a challenge than question.

Cleroux – his habit of touching when talking underscores his fondness for people - has strong opinions on most things, including how to select your summer plants.

Don’t, he says, go for the hanging basket already overflowing with lush growth. “People don’t realize that it’s already at its best and will start to die soon. Buy the plant when it’s a little younger and you have the pleasure of seeing it grow all summer.”