At this time of year, McShane Florist and Greenhouse along Route 201 in Rostraver Township is a sea of red, white and pink blooms floating on lush green foliage.

It’s the Christmas season and a busy time of the year for James R. “Jimmy” Fowler, the enterprising young owner who purchased the landmark business just over two years ago.

By Dec. 25, he will have moved about 10,000 poinsettias out of a complex of greenhouses where they have been nurtured since being potted as tiny rootstock in mid-summer.

They will have been sold to customers at his own shop as well as wholesale to outlets as far away as Wheeling, Mt.Lebanon and Butler.

That’s because Mc-Shane’s is not only a florist but the largest grower of plants from start to finish in the Mon Valley, a specialty nursery licensed by the state Department of Agriculture.

Moreover, it’s as “green” as a greenhouse gets. To wit:

n Two natural gas wells on the 24-acre site help heat more than 25,000 square feet of greenhouses, operations buildings and the house where Fowler lives.

n Water collected from the roofs is stored in an underground cistern as large as a swimming pool, dug and built by hand years ago. Any overflow after watering the plants runs into floor drains and is piped to the cistern for further recycling.

n And, of course, natural sunlight filtering through the expansive glass buildings provides the energy necessary for photosynthesis and plant growth.

“It’s a 24/7 responsibility,” Fowler said. “You never know when a furnace will go out or a pipe will break. You can’t always predict when plants will need more water. You live by their schedule. And living next door, your work is never far away.”

Alarms wired into his house from a computer-based central control room sometimes go off in the middle of the night, a signal for him to jump out of bed and address whatever problem has occurred.

How did a 28-year-old with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Pitt and a master’s degree in business from Robert Morris develop a proverbial “green thumb,” not to mention buying and running such a special business with more than a dozen full-time and part-time employees so soon after college?

“I was taught to take a chance while you’re young,” he said.

He was a sophomore at Belle Vernon Area High School and living a short walk away when Carl McShane, whose parents Jack and Hilda, started the business in the 1940s, hired him as a seasonal worker. It wasn’t long before he was working 40 hours a week and learning the business É well, from the ground up.

“It’s really important to point out that I couldn’t have done it without my family,” he said, especially his father, James A. Fowler, a talented Mr. Fix-It, kept busy with so many furnaces, boilers, pipes, pumps, tubing, automated vents, controls and other mechanical devices necessary to operate a greenhouse complex.

McShane Florist and Greenhouse has been chosen as a Valley Favorite in The Valley Independent’s annual poll for both years that Fowler has owned and operated the business.

He decided to keep the McShane name because it’s widely known and, he said, “It has a great reputation for quality, variety and service. It’s a brand of its own.”

Now with a lawn-cutting and landscaping business as well, the young owner also relies heavily on his mother Kathy, brother John, sister Amy, aunts, uncles and friends to help in busy periods.

“There’s always something going on,” Fowler said, including a virtual year-round schedule for planting and tending to flowers, vegetables and perennials, from 7,000 geraniums for Memorial Day to seeding flats of annuals in waves starting in mid-March.

Floral designers work in a separate special room with an ample supply of fresh-cut flowers stored in a large walk-in cooler teeming with aromatic fragrances. From long-stem roses and exotic “birds of paradise” to hydrangeas and ferns, Sue Baxter, of Monongahela, and Mike Labick, of Monessen, pick out flowers to expertly create arrangements for every occasion.

In the colorful retail area, along with a selection of quality dried arrangements, people pick out fresh bouquets and vases showcased in a glass-enclosed cooler.

Lorraine Koper, of Monessen, invites customers to step into a vanity greenhouse annex featuring poinsettias in an array of sizes and colors at this time of year. Plants with bracts tinted gold-and-black and dangling Steelers Christmas bulbs catch people’s attention.

The “bulb cellar” is a spacious, dark basement cooler filled with shelves and trays of tulips, daffodils and hyacinths already taking root for Easter sales — 12,000 bulbs used to make up 1,500 pots. About 1,000 Easter lilies will be potted early next month.

The temperature in the cooler registered 46 degrees during a visit last week.

“That forces the bulbs to root,” Fowler explained, turning up a pot to reveal tiny roots peeking out of drain holes. “We’ll drop to 42 degrees in two weeks until the plants grow shoots about 2 inches tall. Then we’ll drop to 36 degrees to hold them dormant until we move them upstairs to the greenhouse, where they grow in natural sunlight and reach full bloom in time for Easter sales.”

Growing tens of thousands of plants requires tedious work done by hand and lots of patience.

Today’s 8,000 potted poinsettias arrived as 12,000 rootstock individually potted in special growing medium last July while people were picking tomatoes and zucchini from backyard gardens. Those may have come from the thousands of vegetable and flower annuals that McShane’s markets from April through June.

While hundreds of poinsettias will be sold over the counter, Fowler also delivers the flowers and ferns to more than two dozen churches as far as Canonsburg and Clymer in Indiana County — and to some schools — to add festive, live decor for the holidays.

But since the bulk of poinsettias is sold wholesale to retailers throughout the region, the plant a relative buys in Pittsburgh or McKeesport may well have been grown in Rostraver.

Poinsettias that people hereabouts buy in so-called “big box” stores, while typically cheaper, are likely imported from Canada, where the government subsidizes a mass-production greenhouse industry.

“There’s a big difference,” Fowler said. “Our poinsettias and other flowers are locally grown. They’re fresh and well cared for. They’re of very high quality and basically organic, because we use little to no pesticides.”

They also take a lot of tender loving care by Fowler and staff and, notably, Mike Henderson, of Charleroi, an experienced full-time grower.

At the height of summer, although all vents can be open, temperatures still can reach a toasty 120 degrees while workers are cleaning, performing annual maintenance and readying the nine greenhouses for another season of poinsettias and other plants.

Some things come by instinct.

Standing near an architecturally unique enclosed kiosk always decorated and updated to reflect the season – and an attraction to passing Route 201 motorists – Fowler pointed to a neighbor’s tree across the highway.

“At this time of year, when the sun hits it, we know it’s time to close the greenhouse vents to conserve heat and humidity,” Fowler said.

On a freezing winter night, when an air-lock in a steam-heating pipe triggers a rapid temperature drop in a greenhouse and plants are about to go into shock and die, what’s a greenhouse owner to do?

“You cry,” Fowler said.

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