Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009

Gardener’s life, work just bloomed

“Does this look serious or what?” Margaret “Phil” Campbell says as she bangs into her office, arms full of ice cream. “I got one of everything!”

A tiny sheltie puppy skitters along at her feet. She sets an ice cream cup on the floor and watches the little dog go to town.

“They’re new,” she said, referring to the frozen dog treats. “Purina makes them. Do you want some ice cream?”

This is how she introduces herself.

Campbell, 62, owns Campbell Road Nursery in the Swift Creek area of Raleigh, not far from Cary. In less than five minutes, it’s obvious she treats everyone like a good friend. It’s also obvious she doesn’t like to toot her own horn.

It took a friend to convince her to tell anyone she won an award recently: the Libby Wilder award for “outstanding contribution to the nursery industry by a woman,” from the N.C. Nursery and Landscape Association.

Quite an accomplishment for someone who decided to run her own nursery at an age when most are thinking about retirement.

But she’d rather talk about her new puppy, “Lady Slipper,” named after the rare wildflower. After her father died, she said, they bloomed out of nowhere in front of her house.

“You can’t just transplant these flowers,” she explained. “They have to have just the right spot.”

When Campbell does get around to talking about her life, she has quite a story to tell.

She married husband Carlton after they graduated from Cary High School, and the couple had son David and daughter Marty soon thereafter.

“Life started,” she said. She devoted herself to motherhood and odd jobs, even though she also dreamed of college.

Eventually, she ended up at N.C. State University, working in the registrar’s office, and saw her chance to take some classes.

She squeezed them into her lunch breaks, or came back to campus for a night class after she made dinner.

As her children got a little older, she was able to go full-time, working toward a degree in parks, recreation and tourism management.

She landed an assistant parks ranger position at Jordan Lake, and it looked as if all her hard work over the years was finally paying off.

But one week into her new job, her son, then 18, got into a devastating car accident and went into a coma.

“This is hard to talk about,” she said. “Our lives stopped.”

Campbell’s life became about caring for David, bringing him a yellow rose — her favorite flower — most every day until he woke up a little over three months later, only to need intensive physical therapy.

Four years later, still tending to David, she noticed her neighbor loading flowers. She had an idea: Both she and David could volunteer to help, getting them out of the house.

Soon, she was working upwards of 70 hours a week, and had to start drawing a salary.

A decade later, the volunteer-turned-employee turned into an owner of her own nursery. Campbell Road Nursery was born in 2003, on the street named after her husband’s family.

Campbell built her clientele the old-fashioned way: sitting in a room with a portable heater and phone book. She called garden centers and landscapers, and drove annuals all around town.

Today the nursery has about 70 landscaping contracts and 450-500 other customers, including the governor’s mansion and N.C. State. Campbell also donates flowers to schools and other charities, but she doesn’t like to brag about that either.

“I’m doing it for everybody else to enjoy it,” she said. “Not just so everybody knows about it.”

She runs her business like a family, allowing customers to sign out their own plants on a clipboard hanging from a post. One of her priorities is to build a better breakroom for her employees, which, depending on the season, range from 12 to 25 workers.

The interview was interrupted by employees walking in with paperwork and customers peeking their head in the door. All were received with Campbell’s native North Carolinian drawl and chit-chat about family and flowers.

Even though Campbell said the economy has been tough, especially January through March when nursery business slows, she’s an optimist.

She said she can’t be too stressed when her afternoons are filled with peaceful walks among her flower beds, checking for bugs and diseases.

“Nothing makes you feel better than flowers,” she said, holding Lady Slipper and stroking her downy head.

She still makes a home for David on her property. He has an independent lifestyle, although he still takes meals with the family.

After struggling through some hard times, she’s pleased with how things have turned out. And she’s thankful to be surrounded by such beauty.

“I don’t know what I would have done without this job,” she said.

And the lady slippers that showed up in front of her house after her father passed? She knows exactly where they came from.

“They must have been from him and God.”

Campbell Road Nursery is located at 2804 Campbell Road in Raleigh. Contact them at 851-5108.