Six years ago in Holden Beach, he started building a landscaping and gardening business along the Southeastern North Carolina coast called Peterson’s Pride. That business is now planted firmly in Wilmington.
Peterson, 57, doesn’t cater to roadblocks, whether they be the 10-foot snow drifts up north or waiting for Secret Service agents to survive his dead man’s plates so Bill Clinton could eat.
Peterson now enjoys the North Carolina sunshine, the state’s two planting seasons, and a customer base of Baby Boomers and retirees who have downsized both their living spaces and their landscapes.
“Keep it simple,” is what Peterson’s Wilmington-area customers tell him. “They’re gearing down from the big house,” he says. “Lots of boomers and retirees like to do vegetable gardens in containers. They want easy landscaping, with all the neat grasses, and low maintenance. They want things that grow well here.
“And since, like me, most of my customers don’t get around like we all used to, I’ve been perfecting raised beds. They can be as high as 3.5 feet and you can walk around it and tend to your garden without bending over. I built one for my parents; they’re in their 80s way up in New Hampshire, and they still garden.”
It was up that way where Peterson was born and bred. And in the Boston area more than 25 years ago, his brother started the first Peterson’s Pride. But Paul got hooked on flour, not flowers.
“I bought Weinberg’s Bakery in Hull, Mass., which is just south of Boston,” he says. “That’s a 24/7 deal, with a staff of 13. I did a quarter of a million cups of coffee a year, 6,000 bagels a week. The bagels were handmade, and I ended up with bagel elbow, but it didn’t slow me down.”
The Secret Service did, though. President Clinton got hooked on Peterson’s bagels, the cinnamon raisin variety, during visits to Boston, and eventually had them shipped to the White House.
“I’d have to give the Secret Service the first samples of a batch, called a dead man’s plate,” said Peterson. “And then we had to sit around for another hour or so and wait to see if any of them keeled over.”
None of them did. That actually didn’t slow Peterson as much as the Massachusetts winters.
“By 2006,” he says, “I’d had enough of it. I wanted to get out of Dodge while I still could. I was done with the snow. One of those last years, we had that perfect storm and blizzards that put 10 feet of snow up against the houses. Everyone was stuck.
“I started driving up and down the coast looking for the best spot to start my own Peterson’s Pride. Florida was too hot. North Carolina seemed to have the best temperatures year around – and it had two distinct growing seasons – plantings in August for collards and root vegetables, like carrots; plantings in March for summer vegetables.”
So he sold Weinberg’s Bakery, and the buyer insisted on keeping Peterson’s daughter, Valerie, on board to manage the place.
“She’s making more money than I am down here,” he says. “Well, good for her.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t have a full plate of plantings here:
• Currently has 22 houses with total landscaping and gardening coverage, and plenty of one-timers, customers who order up visits for spreading pine straw or weeding or general cleanups. Peterson’s Pride also handles major accounts like Locks of the Lake in Brunswick County: mowing and caring for 2 miles of road and more than 75 tall palms.
• Moved the office from Holden Beach to Wilmington and hired an assistant; began his studies with the New Hanover County Cooperative Extension and earned a state license for handling chemical applications.
• Got married in April and bought a place in the Carriage Hills section of Wilmington. Brenda, his wife, is a social worker for New Hanover Regional Medical Center and Paul helps her with her passion to rescue animals, and support Monty’s Home’s Pawsitive Partners Prison Program, the first companion dog prison training program in Southeastern North Carolina.
He also enjoys his new customers in leisurely Carolina, much as he did in hectic Massachusetts.
“Being in retail,” he says, “I like the interaction with customers. And people are great here. You do get the occasional retiree who sits on the porch all day waiting for just one weed to pop up. Weeds grow great here with all the heat. One weed and the person’s on the phone expecting immediate action to remedy that one weed.
“I can’t make any money tending to one weed at a time.”
Besides, that’s not much action for a man on the move.
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