By Stephen Smoot
“If people don’t come in with a smile, they leave with a smile.”
Barb Heavner has been, in a manner of speaking, selling smiles for a decade now. With 10 years in business, she and her family who run Cunningham Place decided to aim for more smiles and hold a big Saturday celebration.
Running a greenhouse business along with her family and friends was not always the center of Heavner’s life. For 30 years, she served patients as a registered nurse. Then one day she purchased a greenhouse and informed her husband that she’d grow flowers in it to sell.
And, of course, that is exactly what she did.
“Before we got the greenhouse up,” she explained, “we started back in 2017 and had our first mum crop.” Heavner added, “We sold those off the front porch of our house.”
Long term, however, Heavner knew she’d need good advice. She found it in Brad Mitchell, who owned the Friends Hill Greenhouse in Franklin.
“He mentored me,” shared Heavner, who added, “I couldn’t have done it without him. He taught me things I never would have known” from his years of experience.
Smiling, Heavner shared that one year, Mitchell advised her to buy 200 mum plugs for the year. She instead brought back 400. When he asked why she had doubled up his suggestion, Heavner replied that “I’m not compliant!”
In her 10th year in business, Heavner has expanded from Mitchell’s suggestion of 200 way back then to 2,000 today.
The family has deep roots in farming. “My father-in-law (John Heavner) was a second generation farmer,” stated Heavner. “He took a lot of pride in his ability to grow.” In setting up the operation correctly and properly, “We did it to satisfy him. We wouldn’t want to disappoint him,” she concluded.
He passed away in 2019, but did get to see his family embark on continuing their legacy into the current and future generations.
“We pride ourselves in customer service,” she said, noting that she has regular customers from as far away as Northern Virginia and even Fairmont.
That customer service brought a little something extra to celebrate 10 years of business. Family and friends helped to ladle out two flavors of homemade pulled pork, hot dogs with sauce, cookies, cole slaw, and more.
Cunningham Place has established excellence in community service as well. In recent years, they have donated the flowers used in Franklin’s hanging baskets.
“It’s an honor for us to do that,” she said.
A challenge to any agricultural operation in Upper Tract lies in its general weather conditions. Perennially, the area gets less rain than almost any other part of the Eastern United States. Heavner reported, “Normally, we get four inches of rain in a summer” with the ridges blocking most weather. “This year we got 16.”
