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IRONTO - The Ironto Greenhouse is actually five greenhouses and a barn that have sprouted around Paul and Loretta Johnson's home.

The story goes that back when failing hips finally put Paul on disability, his doctor told him to keep busy.

He decided to raise plants as a hobby. Later, after the hobby had grown into an obsession, he told his doctor about the five greenhouses.

The doctor said he hadn't meant for him to go crazy, Paul recalled. But it was far too late by then.

"This is his hobby that just went wild," said Loretta. "It turned into a monster."

The monster is now a business. Plants are sprawled everywhere, in baskets, barrels and flats. Broccoli and tomatoes, vines and ferns, black-eyed Susans and petunias. A hailstorm recently knocked some of the plants for a loop, but many of those are now bouncing back.

The Johnsons raise and sell thousands of plants a year and seem to have a good time doing it, although Loretta likes to joke that she retired from General Electric and now works "for nothing."

It's a year-round job, but Paul clearly loves the spring, when customers come to load up and he can bend their ears a bit.

They may be buying something basic, but that doesn't mean he can't educate them about something a little more exotic.

"That's 'Queen's Tears' up there," he tells two customers buying tomato plants. "That's in the bromeliad family."

Paul, 71, loves to talk about plants, old times and even his bad hips - which he keeps in jars under the cash register and will gladly take out for show and tell. Loretta says it's gross, but he says no, his hip replacements are what have kept him going.

He grew up a poor farm kid in the coalfields of Russell County, selling liniment door-to-door to help support his father's store. By the time his hips stopped him, he had been a Marine, a policeman and a manager for an insurance company and a mobile home dealership.

When he started out growing potted plants, he had little idea what he was doing. He knew plenty about raising a garden, but little about greenhouses or horticulture. He didn't even know what most of the plants were called.

"I didn't know what I was doing," he said. "I learned the hard way."

Now - though he and Loretta call themselves rednecks - he seems to have an enlightened understanding of plants.

"Every plant has its own personality," he said. To make them grow, you have to learn what they want and where they want to be. A plant may grow great in one spot but poorly just a few feet away, he said. A little music doesn't hurt either.

Judging by the robust stalks, juicy, green leaves and lively blooms, he has figured out how to make most all of his thousands of plants happy.

He does, however, play favorites.

"Right there, that's what I love is coleus."

The coleus is sort of an underdog plant. It doesn't have the romantic associations of a rose or the haughty beauty of an orchid. But Paul, who claims to have 40 varieties of coleus, champions the eager little houseplant with its multicolored leaves.

"The color stays rich and beautiful," he said, even after other plants have dropped their blooms.

"I could just live right in the middle of 'em," he said.

In fact, he and Loretta do live right in the middle of 'em and they seem to enjoy it very much.THE ROANOKE TIMES l Sunday, June 6, 2004See GROWING, 20