Michael Gunesch, a wholesale florist here for decades, died June 11 at his Longmont home. Gunesch, who was 65, fought an 18-month battle with lung cancer.
A service is planned at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Rinn United Methodist Church, 3783 Weld County Road 20 in Frederick.
If his health hadn’t failed, “he would still be working seven days a week, 10 hours a day,” said his son Eric M. Gunesch of Highlands Ranch.
The Gunesch family was in the wholesale floral business, and Mike Paulino, vice president of Paulino Gardens in Denver, said his family bought from the Gunesch family for decades.
“He had the best-quality plants you could ever buy,” Paulino said. “Mike was always on top of research and willing to help people with growing problems such as insects and fungus.”
The Gunesch family provided “thousands of potted plants” for the annual home and garden show for 30 years, Paulino said
Gunesch “was raised in a family of florists,” said his sister, Jo Ann Clugg of Montrose.
She said her favorite memory, as a child, was taking drives with her parents, and her dad and brother paying attention to everything that was growing. “The conversation was always about grasses, trees, flowers, even weeds — what would grow where,” she said.
Michael Gunesch was born in Denver on Feb. 3, 1944, and graduated from Littleton High School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in horticulture at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
He was an intern at a seed company in Paonia and worked for a greenhouse in Arkansas before returning to Colorado in 1968, when he joined his father, William Gunesch, at Park Floral Company in Englewood. He eventually became general manager and president.
When the business was sold, he worked for Rocky Mountain Seed Co. and then started his own business, Michael’s Perennials, in Lafayette, which he ran until this year.
He was on the board of the Colorado Greenhouse Growers’ Association and the Bedding and Pot Plant Association and helped plan that organization’s 1977 Denver convention.
He and his first wife, Loretta D. Dardano, had two sons. They divorced in 1981. He later married Donna O’Hare and they had twin sons.
In addition to his son and sister, he is survived by three other sons: Kevin J. Gunesch of Aurora, Justin T. Gunesch of Boulder and Jeremy O. Gunesch of Longmont; two grandchildren; and his brother, Peter A. Gunesch of Delta.
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Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
