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CapitalPress.com
Friday, August 6, 2021
Rocky Mountain Nursery: Paratore Family ‘bleeds green’
By GAIL OBERST
For the Capital Press
Gail Oberst/For the Capital Press
Cody, Rocky and Kyle Paratore of the Rocky Mountain Nursery.
depths of western waters.
Fishing is what brought
Rocky to Oregon in the first
place. That, and land along
the Willamette River was
cheaper than California’s
farmland in the early 1990s.
There was a time, not so
long ago, when Rocky and
his wife, Kristy, considered
selling the business.
“I didn’t want the boys
to be stuck,” Rocky said.
“But they’ve changed my
mind.”
Apparently,
nursery
roots run deep in Para-
tores. Cody returned home
in 2017 from Oregon State
University with a degree in
business administration and
went to work — “home,”
because the family’s place is
actually on the nursery land.
Cody took over his mother’s
job as the nursery’s book-
keeper, freeing her after 17
years to pursue her love of
tennis and pickleball.
Kyle is home this sum-
mer from OSU, where he
is a junior, working on a
finance degree. The Para-
tores’ daughter, Katy, 24,
is a certified nurse assistant
studying to become a regis-
tered nurse.
Their grandfather, Ross
Gail Oberst/For the Capital Press
Cody Paratore writes up a customer’s order at Rocky
Mountain Nursery in Independence, Ore.
Paratore, moved to Califor-
nia with other Italian rel-
atives after World War II,
working at fruit stands and
teaching school until he
landed in the nursery busi-
ness in 1959. He raised a
family in the nursery indus-
try around Saratoga, Calif.,
operating a retail nursery
for years before selling it
and moving to Santa Cruz,
where he operated a nursery
on the land where he still
lives.
“The nursery was where
I grew up,” Rocky said. “I
never considered doing any-
thing else.”
After working with his
father for 18 years, Rocky
traveled to Oregon during
a fishing trip and found the
20 acres of Willamette River
frontage property that would
become his family’s legacy.
In 1994, Rocky began
growing nursery plants in
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in California, it’s unlikely
that Rocky, 55, will actually
retire.
Still, now that sons Cody,
26, and Kyle, 21, are willing
and able to handle the busi-
ness, Rocky has found more
time for his second job: lur-
ing scaly monsters from the
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INDEPENDENCE, Ore.
— Cody and Kyle Para-
tore, third-generation nurs-
erymen, saw their father off
as he headed for his second
fishing trip in a month.
Rocky, owner of the
wholesale Rocky Moun-
tain Nursery in Indepen-
dence, stopped long enough
to insist that vacations are
now part of his plan, then
returned to a leisurely chat
with a young family fill-
ing a wagon with trees
and shrubs. The wholesale
nursery is open to the pub-
lic for self-service, but the
nursery’s main business is
to supply or connect local
retail nurseries and land-
scapers with the products
they need.
Like his father, Ross,
97 years old and still liv-
ing on his nursery property
the ground, switching to
container-grown plants in
2001. Today, about 8 acres
are covered with thousands
of container plants ranging
from groundcovers to gigan-
tic palm trees, and 21 small
greenhouses full of young
plant material. The selection
includes perennials, ever-
greens, conifers, ground cov-
ers and selected ornamentals.
“I learned most it from
my dad,” Rocky said. “Now,
it’s my home, my hobby and
a living.”
Rocky said his nursery is
small, but he has expanded
his sales by brokering whole-
sale nursery products.
“It’s not an easy busi-
ness. It takes years to learn,”
Rocky said. Rocky and
Kristy wanted their children
to have choices, insisting
they all attend college before
working at the nursery.
“If you don’t like your
job, you’ll hate going to
work,” he said. “But I guess
we bleed green.”
Rocky Mountain Nurs-
ery is at 6920 Corvallis Road
just south of Independence
and is open weekdays to the
public year-round. Summers
the nursery is also open on
Saturdays.
Check the website, www.
rkymtnnsy.com, or call
503-838-4222 for more
information.