Stronger than the storm

Carolina Native Nursery sits in a valley at the foot of Mount Mitchell in the Black Mountains of western North Carolina. Nearby is a small stream that, on most days, runs about 10 feet wide. For 24 years, Bill Jones has built a specialty nursery focused on native azaleas, rhododendrons and perennials, shipping to nurseries, garden retailers, landscape professionals and rewholesalers along the East Coast.

The valley had flooded only once that Bill knew about. And that was in the 1970s when a bridge downstream clogged with debris — a problem the state fixed with a larger culvert and now inspects after every significant weather event. One other hurricane had sent a couple of inches of water through the nursery in Bill’s time, and that was enough to prompt a written standard operating procedure for storm prep. But it was not enough to prepare anyone for Hurricane Helene.

A night that changed everything

The storm had been building for days. Hurricane Helene made landfall Thursday, Sept. 26 on the coast of Florida. But the nursery had already absorbed roughly 6 inches of rain over 48 hours, leaving the ground saturated and the creek running higher than normal, Bill recalls. Then, in an approximately eight-hour window overnight, the storm pushed up against the Black Mountains and dropped everything it had. Depending on the location in the mountains’ drainage basin, between 23 and 27 inches of rain fell Thursday night.

Mount Mitchell rises to 6,000 feet elevation, and the nursery sits at 2,700 feet in one of the mountain’s primary drainages. The water came roaring down into Prices Creek —that nearby water source that typically runs 10 feet wide — and became something unrecognizable.

Bill left the nursery Thursday after work prior to the enormous amount of rain fell. When he and his wife Jill returned Friday afternoon, the floodwater had peaked and begun to recede.

“There was still a couple of feet of water flowing through the property,” he recalls. “Jill and I had to climb across huge piles of downed trees just to survey the damage.”

Three out of four propagation houses were destroyed. Every cold frame was damaged in some way.

“Every hoop, post and growing surface was buried 2 to 3 feet deep in green debris; things like corn stalks, root masses and tree branches that were carried in from upstream,” he describes.

It was time for the overwhelming task of cleanup and recovery. Thankfully, Bill had an insurance policy he could lean on.

The foundation of recovery

Bill had carried USDA Crop Insurance for more than a decade, originally as a requirement of a Farm Credit loan. It would prove to be one of the most significant purchases in the nursery’s history.

USDA’s Crop Insurance for nurseries is structured around plant categories, with premiums calculated against the grower’s published wholesale prices, not production costs, he explains. The policy covers any type of crop failure.

“For my operation, it was totally affordable,” Bill says.

The claims process moved quickly. Bill’s crop insurance agent, who had spotted the nursery’s social media posts following the storm, filed the claim on her own initiative. An adjuster arrived the following weekend, walked the property and declared a 100% loss. It took Bill about six weeks to receive the check since it had to be routed through an approval chain that was appropriate for such a large claim, he says.

“All along, they were assuring me it was going to happen,” he says. “I’m a realist until the money was actually in hand. When they brought me the check, that’s when I knew we were going to be able to rebuild and be back in business. I wasn’t going to pull money out of my pocket to go again. I’m 62. That insurance check, over and above anything else we did, ensured our stability moving forward.”

Inventory is everything

Bill’s existing inventory management proved critical to the speed and accuracy of the crop insurance claim. The nursery maintains a weekly inventory of everything on the ground, published regularly so the sales team always knows exactly what’s available. When the adjuster arrived, Bill provided a complete breakdown by category, including herbaceous perennials, deciduous shrubs and evergreen shrubs, as well as container sizes.

“We knew exactly what we had on the ground,” he says. “It didn’t take us long to get everything they needed to process the claim.”

The lesson for any grower is unmistakable — if your inventory records are loose or incomplete, you will leave money on the table when a crop insurance claim matters most, he says.

Federal and state programs

USDA Crop Insurance was the cornerstone of the nursery’s relief, but Bill accessed a range of additional programs through the USDA’s Farm Service Agency.

The Emergency Conservation Program reimbursed the nursery 75% of documented cleanup expenses, from equipment and portable dumpsters rentals to safety supplies and subcontractor fees.

The Supplemental Disaster Relief Program — passed by Congress specifically in response to Helene as part of a broader relief act — provided compensation above and beyond the crop insurance payout.

He received funds from the Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops program. Bill also participated in the Tree Assistance Program, which helped cover crop replacement costs.

At the state level, Bill secured a small business grant, as well as disaster relief funds that helped with crop loss and infrastructure reimbursement. He also received a Lowe’s small business grant, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce grant and a community foundation grant.

“You’ve got to pay attention to what’s getting passed and what’s available,” Bill says. “Our ears were perked. We were ahead of the game because we were paying attention.”

Murphy Funkhouser, the nursery’s social media manager, quickly launched a GoFundMe campaign. It drew more than 500 contributors and served as a critical bridge that covered payroll and operating costs while the federal crop insurance check was still working its way through the approval process. Bill credits early, transparent communication on social media for the campaign’s reach.

The money to rebuild the nursery was a blessing, but it comes with a financial warning. Both insurance proceeds and grant funds are taxable income, Bill explains. He advises to engage your accountant from day one, be transparent about what’s coming in and set aside enough to cover the tax bill before you spend the recovery funds.

When the cell towers go down

Bill didn’t anticipate the gap in communication. Cell service and landlines went down simultaneously across western North Carolina and stayed down for weeks. In the days after the hurricane, there was no way to reach employees to confirm they were safe. Bill immediately went looking for his business partner Shelby Jackson but couldn’t find her at home. Three days after the storm, she showed up on his front porch. It took a full week before he knew everyone on his crew was accounted for. Everyone from Carolina Native Nursery turned up safe and no one completely lost their homes and none of them lost any family members. Sadly, that wasn’t the case in other parts of the area, as 108 people died in North Carolina.

Bill says it’s tough to come up with an SOP about post-disaster communication.

“There is no good answer to that one,” he acknowledges. “Roads were closed, bridges were washed out and authorities were urging people to stay put.”

He advises making it part of the workplace culture that colleagues look out for each other. Have physical addresses on file and have emergency contacts for everyone.

Community to the rescue

Bill organized four volunteer days in the weeks after the storm, and the response from the horticulture industry and the broader community was extraordinary, he recalls. Landscaping companies closed their doors and brought their full crews out for the day. Garden centers did the same. Friends, family and retail customers arrived and went straight to work.

One of the many lessons he learned about cleanup and organizing volunteers revolves around logistics.

“Make sure the site safe for volunteers before they arrive. And have a plan for where the debris is going before workers show up,” he suggests.

A steel recycling company brought a dumpster at no charge and hauled away all the demolished greenhouse steel. Bill used portable dumpsters for organic debris.

Timing in retrospect

Bill says he regrets the pace of construction — rather, how long it took him to start the rebuilding process.

“We had everything cleaned up and then we had to figure out what needed to be rebuilt,” he recalls. “And I was slow to get that going. I think part of it was just the shock of deciding where we go next. But if I could do anything differently, I would have started the rebuilding process sooner.”

A material bottleneck compounded the delay because washed gravel, which is used throughout the nursery, was impossible to source. Every quarry in western North Carolina was running at capacity to produce road bond for infrastructure repair. When supply opened up, he received it in waves of 15 to 20 truckloads.

But the bigger lesson was labor.

“I could have gotten a construction crew to come out here and hired them for a week,” Bill says. “All my vendors were ready to go on whatever I needed. I should have brought another dozen people in to do that work.”

His greenhouse supplier, Atlas Greenhouses, was ready to ship immediately. Vendors across the industry offered discounts and deferred payment terms.

“Our liners had been ordered, and we were going to have all this stuff to pot up for spring production,” he adds. “Moving faster on rebuilding would have saved some money and time on the backend, because when we started potting, we had space, but we were cramming plants everywhere and putting them can tight. There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to it because we were using only the space that was ready. If we would have had all the construction done ahead of time, we could have spaced things properly and not had to scramble.”

In total, the nursery rebuilt three propagation houses and either rebuilt or repaired 80 cold frames.

Back in business

The nursery’s onsite retail shop reopened within two weeks of the storm. Within three weeks, Bill was pulling available product onto trailers for wholesale clients who could come and pick it up. By February — the nursery’s normal potting start date — production resumed at its regular cadence.

“Our potting procedures were just like nothing happened,” he says.

This is a remarkable feat considering some of their plant material was washed 20 miles downstream.

Bill and his crew potted up roughly 50% more than in a typical spring to restock the operation. The numbers tell the rest of the story. Despite losing the back half of 2024 to the disaster and the front half of 2025 to recovery, the nursery posted its best fourth quarter on record. In 2025, sales came close to matching those of 2024 — a year in which the nursery had completely sold out of every SKU on the property.

“Except for the azaleas, which we have to grow in-house, it’s like nothing happened here,” Bill says.

The unexpected aftermath

When the urgency finally lifted and things returned to normal, Bill found himself at a loss to explain what he was feeling.

“Where is this PTSD coming from?” he recalls thinking.

The sustained intensity of leading a disaster recovery — always on, always solving and always moving — doesn’t unwind the moment the crisis does. When normal strategic planning takes the place of emergency problem-solving, the shift can feel disorienting.

“Give yourself time to grieve what was lost, and celebrate what was built back,” he says.

Bill emerged from the experience with a clear sense of how the horticulture industry takes care of one another. He didn’t come from an ag background. He started the nursery because he thought it was a good business idea. Hurricane Helene showed him that the relationships he’d built with suppliers, customers, peers and others in the community, as well as the kindness of strangers, were the things that made recovery possible.

“I couldn’t do it on my own,” he says. “I needed all of that help. And I got it. It was like, ‘what can we do,’ not ‘what are you going to do’. It was awesome.”

Bill says he’s ready to put this chapter behind him and not dwell on the past. However, for anyone who faces a similar disaster, Bill makes it clear that he is a phone call away.

“I will always be available to anybody who has to go through something like this,” he says. “It has meant so much to us here, and I’ll be as helpful as I possibly can to anyone who needs it.”