Home Care In Mills River, NC

MILLS RIVER, N.C. (WLOS) — Long before poinsettias fill grocery stores and living rooms each December, the Christmas season quietly begins in the heat of summer inside a western North Carolina greenhouse.

“We start growing these at the end of June,” said Erica Merrill, whose family has been in the greenhouse business for generations. “So, it starts feeling Christmas-like even in the hot heat of July.”

The operation began decades ago with her grandfather, who built greenhouses across the country before settling in the mountains and starting Van Wingerden International Inc.

“He landed here because he liked the area,” Merrill said. “We have an amazing climate. It’s a great place to grow plants.”

That family legacy has grown into a massive seasonal effort. Each year, nearly 800,000 poinsettias are cultivated in sizes ranging from tiny two-inch minis to large 10-inch pots.

The growing process begins with cuttings in early summer. Kenny Jenkins, Van Wingerden International Inc.'s sales and marketing director, who works alongside the family, explained how careful pruning helps shape the plants.

“We start these as cuttings in June or July,” he said. “We pinch them, cut them back, which creates breaks at the bottom so you get more heads and more flowers up top.”

By the time the holidays arrive, those plants are shipped across the Southeast, and even as far as Kansas City. Many end up closer to home.

“If you walk into your local Ingles, you’re going to see a poinsettia that was grown right here,” Merrill said. “We take a lot of pride in that, especially knowing it’s locally grown.”

That pride carries beyond the greenhouse.

“It definitely makes me smile when you’re in the grocery store and you see them in people’s carts,” she said. “You know they’re taking it home to make someone’s day.”

While red poinsettias remain the most popular choice, the greenhouse grows a wide range of colors.

“Traditional red is still number one, followed by white,” Merrill explained. “Then it falls off into pinks and some of the more novelty colors.”

Even with tradition at the forefront, innovation plays a growing role. Over the years, the greenhouse has added new technology, including robotic systems that help space plants evenly as they mature.

“They wander up, pick up the plants, and space them exactly evenly in the rows,” Merrill said.

Despite the scale and technology, the business remains deeply personal. Erica grew up in the greenhouse, calling it a childhood playground filled with bikes, family, and growing plants.

“It was a magical experience,” Merrill said. “Watching the plants grow season after season was always fun.”

That sense of family still defines the operation today.

“Everyone has branched off and done their own thing,” said Merrill, “but that family unit is always going to be there.”

As new generations grow up among the rows of poinsettias, Erica hopes the tradition continues.

“It’s a shared experience,” she said. “Watching it through my own kids and my nieces and nephews, it’s something I wouldn’t trade.”

Along with beauty, the growers hope to clear up a few common myths. Despite their reputation, poinsettias are not as dangerous, or difficult, as many believe.

“A pet would have to eat a lot of it to really be affected,” Jenkins said. “And even then, it would mostly cause nausea.”

As for care, Merrill says they’re simpler than most people expect.

“They don’t want to be overwatered or too dry, and they don’t like drafts,” she said. “Once you find the right spot in your house, they’ll thrive.”

Whether used as décor or given as a hostess gift, poinsettias remain a staple of the holiday season, rooted in tradition, family, and months of care that begin long before December arrives.

“It’s a fun industry to be a part of,” Merrill said. “There’s always something growing, and everyone finds a little joy in that.”

MILLS RIVER – Residents filled the gym at Mills River Elementary School on a recent December evening to ask questions and give feedback on a major overhaul of the town’s proposed comprehensive plan, the Imagine Mills River Unified Development Ordinance.

“This is a document that’s supposed to set the future for the community through the year 2040,” consultant Chad Meadows from the Durham firm CodeWright Planners, told residents Dec. 11.

He worked the crowd with a practiced showman’s patter as he fielded questions and walked step by step through the details of the plan, illustrated with color-coded maps posted all around the room.

“If you do get growth and development here in Mills River, do we want it to be sustainable? Do we want it to be resilient? Do we want it to protect the environment?” he asked, rhetorically.

“Do we want tons and tons of multifamily buildings?” he asked.

“That was a joke,” he deadpanned, after a beat, to delayed laughter.

Mills River is the only municipality in the state given an exemption to a ban on downzoning passed by the North Carolina General Assembly last year.

Downzoning means decreasing allowed density or reducing allowed uses on a piece of land.

Mills River’s mixed-use designation is particularly permissive, and on top of that it makes up around 75% of the town’s map, Karen Mallo, another planning consultant working on the project, told the Times-News after the presentation.

She said that’s likely part of why the town got an exemption while so many others were denied.

“In other communities, the zoning is not as loose, it has more restraints and more limitations on what can go in. It offers protections to the surrounding property owners,” she said.

The exemption expires July 1, so the town is on a deadline to put a new master plan in place while it still can.

“After that date. Some of the flexibility that we have today will evaporate,” Meadows said.

Joe Brittain, 71, a small-scale local farmer, told the Times-News that he thinks Mills River should have put a new plan in place 20 years ago to stave off some of the higher-density development he’s seen in recent years.

“It should be (one-)acre lots, or larger, because you put these high-density 3,000- (or) 5,000-square-foot houses in, that is not Mills River. That’s destroying our rural character, our farm character, because the farms are leaving” over climbing land costs, he said.

The new plan will include procedures, zoning districts, land uses and development standards, as well as rules for parking, lighting, landscaping and signage.

The final document will likely be around 600 pages, including 100 pages of definitions, Meadows said.

A new draft should be ready in the first few months of 2026, he said.

The most wide-reaching change from the map as it stands would be rezoning large swaths of town from mixed-use to a handful of newly drafted designations.

Now, only a cluster of districts in the northeastern part of town are zoned for specific uses, including business, light industry and low-density residential. The new plan would turn the map into a patchwork of more evenly distributed, narrowly tailored districts, including the newly defined Agricultural Residential, Rural Residential and Low Density Residential, each with guidance on attributes like setback, land use and building size.

All current allowed uses will be grandfathered in, Meadows said.

There will be at least one more similar public feedback meeting before a plan is adopted, he said.

Mallo said she expects the lines on the map to be the most significant change to the draft plan between now and the release of the next iteration, but others might include renaming the proposed Agricultural Residential district based on negative feedback, for instance.

“In the current zoning, there are some building heights at 60 feet and that just seems unnecessarily high, especially for a commercial building, so there’s some discussion about lowering those, but again, everything’s a draft. Everything’s up for change and that’s why we’re having meetings like this,” she said.

“10 years ago, we didn’t have things like event centers or data centers or solar farms. None of that stuff existed. 10 years from now, there’ll be things that we haven’t dreamed of,” Meadows said.

George Fabe Russell is the Henderson County Reporter for the Hendersonville Times-News. Tips, questions, comments? Email him at [email protected]. Help support local journalism by subscribing.