Cristi Plesscher opened up The Front Porch Garden and Gifts in 2010, and over time it grew in size and more customers started coming in.
However, disaster struck in 2019 when their gift shop caught fire.
“They don’t know what caused it, maybe electrical is their best guess,” said Plesscher.
Plesscher’s daughter Cherith Meyer said after dealing with the insurance company who didn’t pay near the amount needed for repairs, they weren’t sure if they wanted to reopen the gift shop at all. “We were kind of up in the air about whether or not we wanted to reopen the gift shop or just keep the greenhouse open, but just the community and the words of encouragement and just them telling us that they miss us was a huge reason we decided to reopen,” she said.
The support from the community was overwhelming, and some of their suppliers helped out as well.
“Our friends, family, and community members started a go fund me account,” said Plesscher. “We had some of our supply companies, actually many of our supply companies, because we had just got all of our gift shop for the Christmas season–they wrote off what we owed them.”
Now that they’re open, things are starting to feel normal again.
“We missed it so much,” said Meyer. “We missed just displaying and talking to customers and serving the community that way. So we’re really excited just to be open again.”