Coos Bay resident Everett Grimm talks about his hanging basket of purple bells. This season was a record-breaker for Grimm, who said the plants in the basket grew to hang down 8 feet. World Photos by Lou Sennick

Even a lifetime of cultivating plants hasn’t wilted Everett Grimm’s enthusiasm for gardening.

“To me, flowers have been my purple passion,” Grimm said this week while surveying the season’s remains in his greenhouse off Coalbank Slough in Coos Bay.

And it’s been an all-purple growing season in Grimm’s greenhouse, too. He ended the summer with a record — his hanging basket of purple bells sent vines covered in blooms down 8 feet. Typically, the vines hang down about 5 feet.

“I like it because the hummingbirds like it,” he said.

The zippy flyers cruise right into his greenhouse to partake of the purple bells’ nectar. Each year, Grimm orders purple bell seeds and grows his own, starting seedlings no later than February.

He’s been cultivating greenhouse plants for four decades, having originally founded Grimm’s Greenery in about 1960. These days his son, Brian Grimm, manages Grimm’s Greenhouse and Florist in Coquille. But, not ready to retire, the senior Grimm still dabbles in the business.

Each year, his goal is to “put up 800 color bowls,” those bloom-bursting patio pots — and he grows tomato starts, too. He sells those to Ray’s Food Place and Fred Meyer.

Really, it’s a partnership with his dog.

“My big dog, Coco, will come in and inspect. If she doesn’t like (a plant), she’ll pull it out,” he said of the chocolatey brown fluffy Labrador.

And, as summer days shorten into fall, Grimm’s already flipping through garden catalogs.

“I’ve got all my material for next year,” he said.