Morrisville and Preston Progress. Thursday. June 26.1997 -3
Flower child opens new store in Morrisville
BY MARY BETH PHILLIPS
The third generation of florists in
the Davis family has opened up a
flower and interior decorating shop
in the Huntington Business Park off
Morrisville Parkway.
Cydney Davis, 25, will be the pri
mary operator of the new Four
Seasons Florist, with help from her
mother and father. The family also
owns a Four Seasons Florist in
Benson.
The store, brimming with an eclec
tic mixture of silk and dried arrange
ments, gifts, an array of duck
decoys, soaps, furniture, books,
paintings and decorations, will also
sell wallpaper and flooring.
“With Cary Lighting next door, we
hope people will find it convenient
to come here for all their decorating
needs,” Ms. Davis said.
Although it’s not usual for a florist
to also do interior design, Ms. Davis
said the two businesses complement
each other.
“People will buy a silk arrange
ment and get it home and say, ‘This
doesn’t look right,’ or ‘something’s
missing.’ Before we know it, we end
up doing interior design.”
Working in the floral business,
“you learn what looks good togeth
er,” Ms. Davis said. “My style, and
my dad’s style are not for every
one,” she added. “Dad is more tradi
tional, I’m more eclectic. But we
want homes to be reflections of their
taste. We don’t go in and say ‘get rid
of this or that.’”
She strives for a look that is
“pulled together, comfortable, and
believable,” not “an overly decorat
ed feel.”
Her mother, also named Sidney,
but spelled differently, does decora
tive painting on many of the furni
ture and gift items in the store.
The floral business is still the
mainstay, with both silk and fresh
arrangements popular sellers. The
gift and decorating business
“sprouted” out of that, Ms. Davis
said.
Her favorite task is wedding and
party coordinating, while her father
particularly enjoys the interior deco
rating and hopes to develop that
business further.
Ms. Davis recently graduated from
the satellite campus at Wesleyan
College in Raleigh with a degree in
business. She transferred into the
program from Rollins College in
Florida, where she had studied
music and history for two years. She
still hopes to finish the history
degree at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Her hobby is writing. She is now
working on a novella about Elvis
Presley, who is alive and in the wit
ness protection program. The story
involves a romantic triangle with a
florist.
“I am one of the few people of my
generation who actually saw
Elvis,” Ms. Davis explained. “I saw
him in concert when I was four
years old in Fayetteville, the year
before he died and I’ve been a fan
ever since.”
Ms. Davis grew up in Roseboro,
with frequent visits to the family
floral business, Roseboro Florist,
Morrisville Rear Guard to
protect troops in Bosnia
Hazardous duty to last nine months
The 139th Rear Operations
Center of the North Carolina
Army National Guard stationed in
Morrisville is preparing to go to
Croatia for about nine months to
perform rear operations for the
troops in Bosnia.
“We will organize rear area secu
rity and provide logistical sustain
ment,” said Major Robert Jones.
In layman’s terms this means they
will issue food, bedding, bullets
for guns, and other materials to
sustain the soldiers on their mis
sion to Bosnia.
The army organizes the battle
field into three areas, Jones
explained.
The rear area sustains the for
ward area. They will provide an
intermediate base for units coming
from Hungary into Bosnia.
“We’re like a AAA rest stop.
They come to us, find out where
they are going and the best way to
get there, sleep, eat, and get what
they need to finish the rest of their
trip,” he said.
There are 52 men and women
assigned to the Rear Operations
Center and about three-quarters
are married. Fifty to 60 percent
have small children, Jones said.
“There will be a lot of small chil
dren among the soldiers they’ll be
leaving back home.”
The majority of the unit’s mem
bers live in the Triangle area,
although there are some who live
as far away as Greenville and
Little Washington to the east,
‘We will not be in the
most dangerous
area, but we will be in
a zone that has been
designated a haz
ardous duty area. ”
-Major Robert Jones
Hickory to the west, and Charlotte
to the south, Jones said.
Tfre danger they will face is min
imal. “There is not any open con
flict or hostilities now, so we don’t
anticipate being in harms way that
much,” Jones said. “We will not
be in the most dangerous area, but
we will be in a zone that has been
designated a hazardous duty
area.”
The unit will leave Morrisville July
17 and head to Fort Benning,
Georgia for 10 to 14 days for
required training, including cold
weather training, mine warfare
recognition, and other training that
will help them in their mission.
They will then fly from Fort
Benning to Germany and
Germany to Hungary; once they
are in Hungary for three to four
days, they will be processed and
take up their assigned locations in
Croatia.
This is the same unit that went to
Operation Desert Storm/Desert
Shield in September of 1990, one
of first units in the nation to go
over for that conflict.
Inspections office to move, board
passes Quate Industrial expansion
The inspections office will be
moving into the old police station
building, once the new building is
completed, after the town board
voted at its meeting in early June to
move the department.
Commissioner Leavy Barbee
made the motion, saying he had
noticed how crowded the inspec
tions office is. “1 think they would
be better off having a place of their
very own,” Barbee said.
“Next year, we know it’s going to
break loose,” said Commissioner
Billy Sauls referring to the growth of
the town. “We need to prepare for it.”
Mayor Margaret Broadwell sug
gested that the board consult inspec
tors before voting, and wondered
about the logistics of working in
separate buildings from planners
Photo by Maiy Beth Phillips
FLOWER POWER: Cydney Davis stands among the many flow
ers and silk arrangements at Four Seasons Florist, which opened
recently in the Huntington Business Park off Morrisville Parkway.
started by her grandmother. Her Benson in the early 1970s.
parents opened City Florist in In 1979, Richard Davis was named
North Carolina Designer of the Year
by the N.C. State Florist
Association, and went on to win sec
ond place in the southeastern region.
He took a few years doing show
room work in the Atlanta and New
York areas, including work for the
large floral wholesaler Hanfords.
In the early 1980s, the Davises
sold their florist shop in Benson, and
moved back to Roseboro to be with
ailing parents. They opened Floral
Gardens there in 1984.
In 1990, they reopened a shop in
Benson, naming it Four Seasons,
and only moving back to live in
Benson this year from Roseboro.
Ms. Davis lives in Raleigh. She is
dating a young man in the pharma
ceutical business who works for
Novo Nordisk in Clayton.
They learned of the space in
Morrisville through a mutual friend
of the Pressleys, who own the build
ing and run Cary Lighting Center
next door.
“We wanted to do something in the
Triangle area, and this is a great
location,” Ms. Davis said. She
knows walk-in traffic will be slow at
first because the store is not in a
commercial shopping area, but “I
think once people see our work, and
become familiar with the quality of
it, that will take care of itself.”
The fresh flower part of the busi
ness has become a telephone busi
ness, she added. “We’re the only
florist in Morrisville, and we’re con
venient to the [Research Triangle]
Park, Cary and Apex, and we hope
that will be a big plus on the fresh
flower side of the business.”
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and engineers.
“We had the inspections depart
ment in a separate building before
and it worked fine,” Barbee said.
The motion passed 4-1, with
Commissioner Mark Silver-Smith
dissenting.
The board voted to allow an
expansion at Quate Industrial off
McCrimmon Parkway with the stip
ulation that the owner pave his back
lot within 18 months.
David L. Quate had petitioned to
build a large, new building at his
existing business. The property is
2.289 acres.
Quate had requested to be allowed
to have a gravel area where his con
struction vehicles will park, but the
board preferred pavement, allowing
him extra time as a compromise.
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