Midtown magazine March April 2022

Page 90

D E PA R T M E N T S

FA M I LY B U S I N E S S

Cultivating Fairview HOW JO ANN DEWAR TURNED A HOBBY INTO HER LEGACY BY M E L I S S A W I ST EH U FF P HOTO S BY B R U C E D e BOER

T

he recipe for sprouting a plant is much like that of creating a solid business plan: Add light, nourishment and room to grow. For Jo Ann Dewar, however, who had aspirations to start a garden center in the early 1970s as a female entrepreneur, the formula wasn’t quite so straightforward.

Now 90 years old—and still the first to arrive and last to leave Fairview Garden Center

each day—Dewar looks back on her decades as a business owner, saying she wouldn’t change a thing. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way—probably enough to write a book—but I try not to make the same ones twice,” she says. “You won’t be blessed with success if you don’t learn from your mistakes.” Raised on a tobacco farm in Harnett County, Dewar discovered her passion for plants as a young girl. “I’ve always loved playing in the dirt and seeing what I can get to grow,” she says. Growing up on a farm comes with not only fun, but hard work as well. “I have always been a hard worker, and it taught me from an early age that you have to work hard to get what you want,” she says.

Sewing the Seeds A chance meeting at Dewar’s high school led her to work at the FBI in Washington, D.C. as a fingerprint analyst under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover. Though the handful of years she spent away from farm life makes for an interesting fun fact, she knew she was meant for fresh air rather than the confines of a federal building. “Fingerprints are much like propagating plants,” she muses. “Each root is like its own signature, as is a fingerprint.” When she and her husband, Tom, moved to a rural stretch of land on Holly Springs Road in the 1960s, it wasn’t long before the mother of four turned her green thumb into a backyard hobby. Tom built a Quonset hut-style greenhouse for his wife to “play around in.” Unbeknownst to her at the time, this small greenhouse set the scene for a generational legacy.

88 | midtownmag.com

030422MM_DEP_FairviewGardens.indd 88

2/18/22 12:03 PM


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.