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94-year old NE Portland Institution Closes its Doors

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Web Manager Posted in Concordia News
Marbott’s Greenhouse & Nursery has a sign up announcing its closure. Photo by Dina Sage.
On Memorial Day in 1948, the Vanport flood destroyed the nation’s largest wartime housing development. Photo from Oregon History Project.

Marbott’s Greenhouse & Nursery (1808 NE Columbia Blvd.), which first opened in 1930, will close this spring due to third generation owner Larry Marbott’s complications with his recent eye surgery.

Marbott’s sells annuals and perennials, trees and shrubs, unique houseplants and home goods. 90% of the plants sold at Marbott’s are grown onsite in one of eight greenhouses.

Marbott’s was started by Larry’s grandparents, Ernest and Anna Marbott, who lived with their children on the property and ran the nursery. At the time, the area surrounding the nursery was filled with dairy farms, produce markets, and other agricultural businesses.

In its early days, Marbott’s faced significant environmental challenges. The year that the greenhouse opened, the Columbia River froze. In 1948, the Columbia River flooded Vanport, the then largest housing project in the U.S., located between Vancouver and Portland. Ernie Marbott (who was Ernest’s son and Larry’s father), remembered how close the water came to the nursery during the Vanport flood.

Ernie took over the nursery in 1954 and was one of the first growers in Portland to grow poinsettias, still a specialty of Marbott’s. Ernie also created a new gloxinia color and named it Marbott’s Pink. The gloxinia was listed in seed catalogs when it first came out.

Ernie died in 2022 but even towards the end of his life, he enjoyed sitting at the nursery’s outside counter and giving advice to customers.

Larry Marbott has announced that Marbott’s Greenhouse & Nursery will be closed at least for this April, May and June, and maybe longer. “The future is a little bit hazy, just like my eye is,” Larry Marbott told Willamette Week last month.

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