Lettuce and Lobelia—Choices Abound at Charlotte’s Green House
Family-Owned Valle Crucis Business Celebrates 30 Years
Story by Kathleen McFadden
Down a gravel drive off Dewitt Barnett Road in Valle Crucis is a 100-year-old family farmhouse with a nursery on the grounds that’s currently celebrating its 30th year. Charlotte’s Green House—the business of mother and daughter team Charlotte Frost and Sharlie Siegmund—is one of the High Country’s agricultural mainstays.
Charlotte’s Green House is a multifaceted operation. In their two greenhouses, the two women grow 12 varieties of specialty lettuce, as well as annuals, perennials and herbs.
It all started with lettuce. Thirty years ago, Charlotte and her husband Benjamin read an article about growing lettuce in Horticulture magazine and decided to try growing the Bibb variety as a hobby. Their hobby quickly evolved into a business.
The couple wasn’t totally unprepared for their new jobs as commercial producers. Charlotte grew up on a farm in Washington and Benjamin was an avid gardener. Still, like all producers, they faced a learning curve or two.
In the beginning, their principal markets were in Winston-Salem, but today they sell their product locally to restaurants and country clubs in Boone, Blowing Rock, Linville and Banner Elk. Some of their customers have been buying from them for three decades.
The lettuce is harvested twice each week. “We start harvesting lettuce at 7:00 a.m.,” Charlotte said, “and have it out by 11:00 or 12:00. We harvest, pack and deliver on the same day. It’s very important to us and our customers to have a totally fresh product.”
As the market has changed, so have the lettuce varieties maturing in the greenhouse. Most of the current varieties are lettuces grown in Holland and Italy. “We are forever trying new things,” Charlotte said.
They begin seeding in late January, and Charlotte and Sharlie produce from March through New Year’s. Their lettuce is pesticide-free and low impact. As soon as they harvest, they plant again, and trays of lettuce in three stages of growth line the side of the greenhouse, rotating forward until the plants are ready to go into the ground.
Sharlie has been working with her mother since 1986 when she returned to the area after several years of Peace Corps and USAID work in the Philippines and Indonesia. Sharlie holds a master’s degree in soil science, and helped expand the business to include flower and herb sales. Charlotte’s Green House is truly a family operation, with Sharlie’s husband Paul also pitching in as needed in between running his own independent consulting business—The Extra Touch—at the farm. But the best helper of all is Sharlie and Paul’s 11-year-old son Fred, a very willing and knowledgeable young man. Fred also herds the chickens.
More than 400 varieties of plants are available at Charlotte’s Green House, and Sharlie also has a complementary business in edible flowers, including nasturtiums, tuberous begonias, violas and pansies. “During the summer, Sharlie sells about 1,000 edible flowers a week,” Charlotte said.
In addition, Sharlie accepts a few landscaping jobs and has another strong side business in custom-planted containers—both sales and rentals. She recently visited a client’s home to view the colors of an Oriental carpet and then matched the flower colors in the container garden she created to the carpet.
While the lettuce operation remains strong, the flower end of the business has changed over the past five years with the growth of plant sales at big box stores. Impulse buys at the large stores have had an impact on sales at Charlotte’s Green House.
Contrary to what some consumers believe, the big chain stores that sell plants do not buy their stock locally, but purchase from huge factory-type farms in warmer climates with acres and acres of greenhouses and enormous labor forces. The price competition posed by such operations and the easy accessibility of blooming plants in stores’ parking lots along High Country highways makes it difficult for small family-owned operations such as Charlotte’s Green House to remain viable.
One of the strategies the two women has devised is to raise new colors of flower varieties each year for returning customers. This year, the perennial lobelia available at the greenhouse is a deep wine red—“almost a merlot,” said Sharlie—that is different from the one that was available last year. Such attention is a hallmark of the customer service the two women provide.
To experience that kind of customer service, visit the nursery at 269 Greenhouse Road off Dewitt Barnett Road in Valle Crucis. Hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Charlotte’s Green House is also open by appointment. To contact Charlotte or Sharlie, call 828-963-5974.
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