Page 18 - The Hunt - Spring 2020

HOME & GARDEN
continued from page 14
throughout southern Chester County, which was once known as the Carnation Belt.
The heyday for some 25 local family growers lasted from the 1920s into the ’30s. As late as the early 1950s, there were still 50 flower greenhouse operations between Oxford and Chadds Ford. But Richard Nixon’s presidency introduced trade inroads into Columbia, which started exporting flowers here. Labor costs there were as low as 27 cents an hour. “We were paying over $1 an hour,” says Rosazza.
The Rosazzas were cutting 1,500 carnations a day at one point, investing just 7 cents per flower. By the end,
it was costing $1.17 per flower, and they were cutting less than 750. They finished in the red for two or three years before packing the last one in 2016.
Over the years, Ralph’s sons, Ronnie and Danny, have helped keep the diversified family greenhouses alive,
overseeing 13,000 square feet of indoor growing under glass and another 3,000 under plastic. There are six greenhouses on an acre of property. The other
4.5 acres are underwater and too low to grow on, but it’s fine for raising cattle.
After 31 years with his father full time, Danny is now making parts for jet engines. Ronnie, the oldest, is also an owner at the neighboring Glenn Willow Orchard. “Dad knows more about flowers than anyone,” he says.
At the turn of 20th century, Ralph’s grandfather, Odone, left the Italian town of Rosazza for Paris. At 16, he was in southern Chester County cutting marble in the quarries. Eventually, he’d work for five years in Gettysburg on memorial statues after the Civil War, then on marble statuary outside the courthouse in West Chester.
Odone bought his Avondale properties in 1902, building the greenhouses in 1926 and 1927.
16 THE HUNT MAGAZINE
spring 2020