Legend Award winner, Flowers Plantation, Johnston County have evolved together

By RANDY CAPPS

Today, Flowers Plantation is a sprawling series of stores, shops and neighborhoods outside of Clayton, surrounding the area where N.C. 42 meets Buffalo Road. Much like Johnston County itself, that area has changed quite a bit in the last 40 years or so, and a big part of the reason for the rise of Flowers Plantation, as we know it today, is the 2021 Johnston Now Honors Legend Award winner, Rebecca Flowers.

Flowers is the daughter of Percy Flowers, one of Johnston County’s most well known figures and the man dubbed “King of the Moonshiners” by the Saturday Evening Post in 1958. As he got older, his daughter began to think about the burden of managing a farm that had grown to around 4,000 acres.

“I have a strong belief that it was my purpose to continue the ‘legend’ of our family farm,” she said. “Teaching was my passion from adolescence. I taught K-3 for five years and loved it so much. The specific moment that changed my work career was an afternoon drive to my apartment in Raleigh, after a fun-filled day with my students. While looking at my monthly check, it dawned on me that my salary would not be enough to pay the property taxes. It wasn’t the money that concerned me, it was the realization that my parents were growing older, my brother, Joshua Percy Flowers Jr., died in a solo plane flight at the age of 24, and the farm would come to an end when my parents were no longer there.

“The determination to change that ending became the determination that I feel every day.”

So, she decided to transform the farm.

“Johnston County became zoned after the development plan for Flowers Plantation had been completed by some talented business people,” she said. “Those people were my blessing, and the manner in which the plan came together is miraculous. It didn’t come together in a year, but rather over the course of over 30 years.”

That vision started when J. Willie York, the man who developed Cameron Village, the first mixed use community in Raleigh, introduced Flowers to Lewis Clarke, from the N.C. State School of Design, in 1986.

“(He) met with me and he never mentioned that he realized I didn’t have the money to pay for his planning services, but rather suggested that I pay him monthly,” she said. “I did so for a year. At that time, the Johnston County planner, Jeff Coutu, lived in one of the growing neighborhoods here, Neuse Colony. He began the effort to bring zoning into our county. Even though I knew little of what PUD (Planned Unit Development) meant, Flowers was the first PUD zoned area in the county. In a very small measure, Johnston County and I grew together in planning and becoming more than just agricultural.”

The fact that she did all of that as a woman in business was all the more remarkable.

“Women today have an equal opportunity to be as successful (and some more so) than men,” she said. “Again, I never really thought about the fact I was the only woman in the business meeting! Any young woman who has a dream should never give it away and never give it up but rather continue to do what is necessary, regardless of the hours and the hardships.

“It is also feeling strongly about the purpose in what you do. Being driven solely by money is not the answer. Intelligence and ability is important, but even the most brilliant can fail without purpose,”

Of course, she never would have had the chance to transform the countryside into what it is today were it not for her family’s hard work in the past.

Dr. Josiah Ogden Watson and his family built the “Flowers’ Homeplace” in the 1700s, and the Dr. Watson Inn that now stands on the site as the visitors center for Flowers Plantation was built in part from the original materials and designed to appear as it did when it was originally built.

Flowers’ grandparents moved to the area from Wilson and bought the property in 1905, which at that time included the home and 266 acres.

“They worked diligently but during the Great Depression were unable to make the payments to the bank,” she said. “My father left home at the age of 16, and never completed a high school diploma. Yet he was determined to be successful and as we know he made history making money and being a successful hunter with his Walker Hounds. When my grandparents’ home and farm were auctioned at the courthouse in the 1930s, my father purchased it and gave his parents life rights. They never moved but continued to work the farm. I see that as a very purposeful act of success. That act caused me to think about the sacrifices and assisted with my determination not to lose the family’s farms.”

Flowers, along with her husband, John Bullock Jr., and children, Jordan and Joshua, have all worked together to make Flowers Plantation what it is today.

“Now, there is a fifth generation, in three grandchildren, whom I have no doubt will continue to contribute to the legend of Flowers Plantation,” she said.