‘I cried. I haven’t slept.”
Susan Hung was still coming to terms with the fact that almost her entire crop of bedding plants, flowers and herbs — worth more than $80,000 — has been destroyed after a business deal turned sour.
Hung, 70 — who has run Henry’s Greenhouses on Sidaway Road near Steveston Highway with her husband, Henry, 74, for more than 40 years — now has virtually nothing to sell, aside from some hanging baskets, to her chain of wholesale and retail clients.
The Hungs claim the vast majority of their crop in their 14 greenhouses was sprayed with weed-killer, likely Roundup, in the last couple of weeks and suspect it was done by people who were working on their property.
And with the week before Mother’s Day being the couple’s busiest of the year, they’re “devastated” at the potential loss of many major clients and may now have to put their retirement plans on hold.
“I feel very upset. I don’t understand how people could do this,” said Susan.
“These are my babies that I raise in here. There is at least $80,000 worth of crop lost, but that’s a really low estimate, it’s probably higher.
“We have almost nothing left to sell, we have no business and we will lose customers; they will go somewhere else.
“It’s a very short season, it will be over at the end of June.”
Susan, who lives in the family home on the five-acre property, said she first noticed something was wrong about a week ago, when the sun started to shine, after a few cloudy days.
“It was only then that it started to show on the plants and I noticed the smell; it was giving me a headache it was so strong,” she said.
“It was clear that Roundup had been sprayed on everything.”
The people the Hungs suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had, according to the Hungs, been working in the greenhouses almost every day since January, learning the ropes with a view to leasing the business at the end of the season.
But a fall-out, the reason for which has not been made clear by either party, led to them not showing up over the last 10 days or so.
It was only then that the Hungs started to inspect the greenhouses more closely and they noticed that many of the plants hadn’t been watered for some time and that personal items had gone.
“My mom is really upset; she’s upset that she’s going to be letting people down with their orders,” said the Hung’s daughter, Marshalla Loland, who was helping to interpret for her parents.
“She’s still hoping that some can be salvaged.”
The Hungs made a complaint to the Richmond RCMP last week. The police declined to comment on the matter on Tuesday.
The News contacted one of the people who had been working with the Hungs. The man indicated he didn’t speak English and, at first, that he didn’t know Susan or Henry Hung.
A phone call was then received by the News from an English-speaking friend of the man, and then his lawyer, Lawrence Woo.
Woo told how his client paid the Hungs $40,000 and made a verbal agreement to eventually lease the business, which included the Hungs’ client list.
According to Woo, that list failed to live up to expectations and the reason the crop died was because Henry Hung was out of the country for the month of March and the plants in questions were simply neglected, as opposed to poisoned.
He also claimed his client has been harassed almost daily by the Hungs, who were demanding more money as part of the aforementioned verbal deal.
Woo couldn’t say whether his client intends to take legal action against the Hungs, but indicated that his client has received very little in return for his investment.
