Cousins, Cole, Austin and Jake Wuthrich rotating pansies in one of Rudy’s many greenhouses.
LOGAN – Rudy’s is a generational family plant business with greenhouses located at 1365 Canyon Road in Logan. They grow thousands of plants in their 42 greenhouses and generally employ about 20 people.
As early Spring arrives, things get a little crazy around Rudy’s. The annual plant season begins and box-trucks are going and coming and the place is crawling with extra help. Everyone is trying to get the goods into retail outlets.
The green houses also have their share of foot traffic from people who know where to go for plants and flowers for their home and garden.
Right now, the green houses are full of plant starts. Some of the flowers are beginning to bloom.
Rudy’s rents box trucks and loads them for destinations in Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming and all parts of Utah.
“The farthest we’ve been is probably Dillon, Montana or Cody, Wyoming,” said Jake Wuthrich, the grandson of Jerry, the living patriarch of the clan. “We keep busy delivering down to Salt Lake on a daily basis.”
They have different truck routes that take them to different places at different times during the week.
“Lee’s Marketplace is one of our good customers and they only sell the best quality,” Jake said. “We supply plants to all of their locations. They have stores in Heber, North Salt Lake, North Ogden, Smithfield and Logan.”
Jake said his father and grandfather worked at the greenhouses and he and some of his cousins plan on keeping with tradition.
“I was working at Nucor and came back to do this,” he said.
Jake said they are starting to get to the busy time of year and it will stay busy until August or September. After that, they clean everything up and start poinsettias for Christmas, bringing another rush from Thanksgiving until Christmas.
Jolene Spackman was out in the green houses inspecting some of the flowers for customers.
She has been at Rudy’s for over 40 years and vital to their operation.
“She is the contact for most of their customers,” Jake said. “She is the Swiss army knife of the place.”
Jerry Wuthrich said his father, Rudolf, immigrated from Switzerland and started the business in 1952. He worked with his brothers in a nursery in North Logan and decided to go out on his own and grow plants for wholesale.
Flowers are big in Switzerland so it’s no wonder when the family got in to Cache Valley they started growing them.
Jerry said they had one greenhouse when they first started the business and four generations later it blossomed to multiple green houses.
Pauline, Jerry’s wife, said they have children that work for them and send their friends to us because they like working here.
“We also have parents of kids that worked here send their kids to work for us because they say this is where they learned how to work,” Pauline said. “It’s not therapy, its work. There is always plenty to do.”
She said all of her children have worked there and two of her boys are still working there today. A third son works for a seed company.