On 150 acres spread on two adjoining farms, Greaser, his wife, Pat, and son, Patrick, grow enough trees to fuel Franklin Nursery, a $1 million-per-year landscaping/retail nursery business located in Sewickley, an affluent Pittsburgh suburb. After buying an existing six-acre nursery in 1973, the Greasers, both former schoolteachers, grew the business with an educated eye toward horticultural trends. Today they sell trees, shrubs, and woody ornamentals, as well as a variety of roses, annuals, and perennials.

"Our slogan is 'Trees, Trees, Trees: We Grow Them,'" says Pat Greaser, who manages Franklin Nursery's retail business. "It was too expensive purchasing and transporting trees from distributors, so we decided to cut out the middleman. We bought one farm in 1987 and another in 1990 and converted them from dairy operations to tree farms. Now 80 percent of what we sell is grown on our farms."

A Franklin Nursery employee puts some final touches on a large landscaping project at a home in Marshall Township, a northwest suburb of Pittsburgh. Franklin Nursery, a $1 million-per-year landscaping/retail nursery business in Sewickley, grows itsown trees on two nearby Beaver County farms.

Franklin Nursery is just one Pennsylvania horticultural business riding a national trend that has seen nursery, greenhouse, and floriculture crop sales nationwide total $10.9 billion in 1997, a leap of 43 percent from $7.6 billion in 1992. The nation's booming economy has brought forth record-setting building rates for new homes and given Americans plenty of disposable income to spend on the country's top leisure activity: gardening. Businesses and governments also are buying plants to dress up offices, parks, highways, hotels, and restaurants. Landscaping has become interlinked with the building industry as new construction project estimators include greenery into their budgets. Public buildings and businesses also are starting to change landscape plantings with the seasons. Whether consumers are buying plants and landscaping their homes, or paying someone else top dollar to do it for them, the resulting boom for horticultural companies has brought growth worthy of Jack's beanstalk.

"For most homeowners, working with plants is not the goal," says floriculturist Dennis Wolnick. "They want their house to look good--and they aren't necessarily doing it themselves. The same is true for public and municipal buildings. We're not seeing explosive growth in nursery and greenhouse operations, but we are in service industries such as landscaping and lawn services."

In Pennsylvania, the term "green industry" has a double meaning. Every year since 1981, cash receipts from nursery and greenhouse crops has increased by about 6.5 percent. Those cash receipts pay more than 30,000 full- and part-time workers. The green industry encompasses nonedible crops, including fresh-cut flowers, flowering and foliage plants in containers, trees, shrubs, bulbs, sod, and ground covers, as well as fruit trees and vegetable transplants grown for field production. Pennsylvania's greenhouse and nursery crop sales for 1998 totaled more than $347 million from nearly 3,555 nurseries across the state, ranking it eighth in the nation. The state has more than 900 greenhouse operations, 1,100 garden centers, 1,439 landscape contractors, 1,272 florist shops, and more than 2,000 retail stores selling plants. "These numbers reflect businesses with nursery and dealer licenses issued by the state's Bureau of Plant Industry in the Department of Agriculture," Wolnick says. "A significant number of small businesses with a pickup truck and handful of clients exist under the radar." The economic benefits generated by all aspects of the industry add up to a tidy stack of greenbacks: $12 billion per year, according to Penn State statistics.

Pat Greaser and her dog, Lance, show Allegheny County horticultural extension agent Mike Masiuk some of Franklin Nursery's rose plants. Masiuk recently helped the business expand into perennial plants and recommended a computer software package to help with marketing.

"Pennsylvania's green industry comprises many small-scale businesses," Wolnick explains. "While we don't have many huge horticultural operations, we have many small firms to make up for it. For instance, even though Pennsylvania's green industry ranks eighth in the nation, the state is near the top in the number of greenhouse operators."

Another benefit for the state's economy is the industry's penchant for adding value to its products. Value-added, the current buzzword for economists, means taking raw materials --for instance, cattails, chrysanthemums, and baby's breath--and making a more valuable product, such as a flower arrangement. "Landscaping services, floral design, interior landscaping, and landscaping design all are great examples of value-added products," Wolnick says. "Adding value also provides more employment and higher profits, as well as an increased tax base and more services. There's significant opportunity for the industry to add even more value to its output. Retail stores and nurseries could be marketing services to accompany every plant they sell, whether it's planting, pruning, or fertilization. Customers love the idea that someone is protecting their purchase from cradle to grave, so to speak."