Groundskeeper Minh Pham Has Been the Face of Portland Nursery for 20 Years

Just about everybody who has ever shopped at Portland Nursery’s main location on Southeast Stark Street knows Minh Pham, even if they’ve never spoken to him.

A presence at the nursery’s entrance since 1994, Pham greets customers, ensures the parking strip blooms in a riotous garden of earthly delights, helps customers unload wagon loads of plants and makes sure everything is where it belongs.

For 25 years, says Portland Nursery general manager Suzy Hancock, Pham, who’s “almost 80 years young,”  has done whatever needs to be done. During that time, he’s also raised three children—a commercial pilot, an engineer and ballerina-slash-banker.

Pham’s grateful for the work—and just to be alive.

Once a surgeon in the South Vietnamese army, he says he spent eight years in a detention camp after the war, before the Tabor Heights Methodist Church and Portland Nursery then-owner Bob Denney sponsored his family’s relocation from Saigon to Portland. Pham says he’ll never forget his first day at the nursery.

“My God, it was paradise,” he says. “All of the flowers on earth are here—we didn’t have many flowers in Vietnam.”

Hancock, who started at the company around the same time Pham did, says his smile, work ethic and presence long ago made him an indispensable part of the company.

“For our customers, Minh is the face of Portland Nursery,” she says. “He’s our ambassador.”