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Featured photo: Business owner Robert Stine stands near rows of young plants growing at Botanical Treasures in Hoopers Creek, North Carolina, in May of 2025. Hurricane Helene destroyed Stine’s business in late 2024. (Photo by: Benjamin Rickert.)
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Only a few weeks before Hurricane Helene swept over Western North Carolina, Robert Stine’s business, Botanical Treasures, was looking its best. The wholesale plant nursery specializing in perennials was prepared to host visitors who were in Asheville for the National Symposium of the Perennial Plant Association.
“We’re a producer of quality perennials, and we grow the common to the unusual to the native,” said Robert. “We try to produce the best quality that we can produce, which takes time.”
With 30 years in business, Botanical Treasures had seen success through Robert’s hard work and expertise in sourcing, cultivating, and propagating plants. As he readied the property for guests, he had no idea that his hard work would soon be washed away.
$2 Million Lost Overnight
When the storm hit on September 27, 2024, the unimaginable happened. Along with countless other communities, Hoopers Creek in Fletcher, North Carolina – the home of Botanical Treasures – flooded. In the chaos of heavy winds and rain, debris blocked water from flowing under a nearby bridge, diverting it all onto Robert’s property. In only a day, Botanical Treasures was almost entirely destroyed.
After the worst had passed, Robert estimated that less than five percent of the plants had survived. He had lost around $2 million worth of inventory overnight.
Like many other business owners across Western North Carolina, Robert felt hopeless as he tried to pick up the pieces. How could Botanical Treasures – a business he had carefully built over the decades – recover from a loss this massive? Where should he even begin?
A Hopeful Spring
As Robert put it, he was in survival mode in the weeks following Helene – for himself and for his business. The roads were impassable, and much of the region lacked access to power, water, and communication.
“Everywhere I looked, there was destruction,” he said.
Robert was eventually able to seek help, and he discovered the Small Business Center (SBC) at Blue Ridge Community College. He put in a request for small business disaster counseling and was quickly accepted.
Since Hurricane Helene, one of the Small Business Center’s top priorities has been helping business owners navigate the challenges of recovery. This support has included guidance on insurance claims, loss assessments, and rebuilding financial records, as well as securing temporary incubator space for those whose physical locations were destroyed.
This assistance was exactly what Robert needed, and with the help of Blue Ridge’s SBC staff, he applied for and received numerous grants that allowed him to begin replacing inventory and restoring damaged property. These included grants such as the Western North Carolina Small Business Initiative Grant, which provided Robert with $25,000, along with an additional $9,000 from two rounds of funding through the grassroots LoveHendo Business Recovery Fund.
Ben Smith, the director of the SBC, had the opportunity to work with Robert directly.
“When we meet someone who has experienced extreme loss, it’s important to come alongside them in their struggle and really witness what they’re going through – to bear with them in their suffering,” said Ben. “Hope for a brighter future begins with knowing you’re not alone and believing things are going to get better.”
With financial assistance in hand, and through the help of volunteers and concerned customers, Robert began rebuilding his business. Though the winter after the storm was challenging both physically and mentally, the spring that followed brought hope.
“Of course, I thought it was a longer, colder winter than normal,” said Robert. “We had that bleakness for all those months, which was so mentally challenging. But for me, the big game changer was to see life come back. At the end of the fall, you’re going into the dead of winter, struggling to make things work – but then you’re seeing things blossom, bloom, come back to life. It’s encouraging.”
Rebuilding with Resolve
Today, Botanical Treasures is open for business, supplying perennials to customers throughout Western North Carolina. His property still shows scars from Helene like downed trees and eroded riverbanks, but now he has several hoop houses filled with thriving plants on a lot covered in fresh gravel. Every corner of Robert’s property brings stories to mind about what was lost or who helped him to rebuild. Though the road to recovery remains long, there is hope on the horizon for this local small business.
“And my next thing is, I’m going to prove how well we can do,” said Robert. “I want to see what we can do by the one-year mark of the storm to gauge our success – our rebuilding.”
The Small Business Center at Blue Ridge Community College continues to be a crucial resource for local business owners and entrepreneurs—whether they’re rebuilding after Hurricane Helene or pursuing new opportunities. From grant and aid applications to marketing strategies and beyond, the SBC supports both startups and established companies. Through workshops, personalized counseling, financial education, and a wide range of resources, the Center helps small businesses overcome challenges and thrive.
More information about the Small Business Center is available at www.blueridge.edu/sbc.