When Leslie Herndon was preparing to leave town for vacation, she asked a neighbor kid to water the flowers in her outdoor containers while she was gone. Of course, she would pay him.
Sure, he said. She showed him the pots.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Really?’” Herndon says with a laugh. There were at least 40 flower-packed containers.
Herndon’s backyard floral paradise is where she tries out new flower combinations before using them for Greenscape clients. Those new trailing begonias. That unique elephant ear she toted back from her beach vacation. The latest varieties of coleus.
Herndon really, really loves flowers.
It’s how she got her start at Greenscape 16 years ago, as floriculture foreman, fresh out of college. The company was much smaller back then. There wasn’t even really a floriculture department.
“They just said, ‘Here you go,’” she recalls. So she did.
Today, 16 years later, Herndon is vice president of operations for Greenscape, after rising up through the company working several different jobs.
She has plenty to do — “lots and lots of meetings and clients,” she says, but she keeps her green thumbs in floriculture, continuing to design the unique “living walls” that have become a Greenscape hallmark.
Floriculture, she says, is in her blood.
On her dad’s side of the family, several relatives were in the garden center business from the 1960s through the 80s. And her mom always grew plants and flowers.
In high school, Herndon was a member of Future Farmers of America and took horticulture classes. After school, she worked at a garden center in her hometown of Huntersville, pulling weeds for hours in the daylily field, potting plants, dividing perennials.
She loved it so much she decided to major in horticulture at North Carolina State University. She also did a three-month internship in Atlanta at Post Landscape Group, now HighGrove Partners, which has one of the top floriculture programs in the country.
Just days after graduation, she was on the job as floriculture foreman at Greenscape, Inc.
“I was putting flowers in the ground, maintaining them and designing new beds,” she says. “Most of the time, it was just me. During installation season I had a crew to help for a few weeks, then they were off to something else and it was just me again, maintaining the flowers.”
Like the flowers in her care, she thrived.
“I liked being creative, seeing what plants and flowers were coming out next,” she says. “I’ve always been geared more to the color side of landscaping, more than shrubs and trees.
“Actually, I’m still in that job,” the vice president says with a laugh. “I’m kind of kidding. But I’m kind of not.”
She has a habit of collecting responsibilities.
When Greenscape’s safety manager left, Herndon took on that role, in addition to her floriculture work. When an account manager left, that fell to her, too. For a while, she was juggling three jobs.
“For a long time, the joke around here was that whenever somebody leaves, Leslie gets their job,” she says. “Back then, we didn’t have nearly as many employees, so everybody wore a lot of hats.”
But as Greenscape grew, all those jobs were too much for one person. Herndon became a client relations manager, then senior client relations manager, then director of client relations. In January, she was promoted to vice president of operations.
Her rise in the company seems inevitable.
“I tell my team members, ‘You have to work for the job you want, not for the job you have,’” Herndon says. “I was always willing to do additional work, and I knew if I did, I would eventually be rewarded. And if I didn’t, it would be a missed opportunity.”
She focused on adding value to the company, she says — regardless of her formal job title.
“When people get caught up in their job title, and only want to do what that entails,” Herndon says, “there are missed opportunities left and right.”
Back at that college internship in Atlanta, Herndon’s supervisor left the company just days after she started. She was on her own for over a month with no change in her internship responsibilities, which were intended to rotate throughout the company.
“I walked into the company president’s office and said, ‘Hello, my name is Leslie and I think you’ve forgotten me.’”
The president immediately got involved and oversaw the rest of her internship himself.
“I’ve always been fairly driven,” she says. “I always want to do more, change things. I like to make things move forward.” She laughs. “Part of that is impatience.”
“Here at Greenscape, they allow me to get things done, with independence,” Herndon says. “Some owners in this industry, it’s their way or the highway. I could not work for those owners.”
Greenscape President and CEO Daniel Currin and his father, Greenscape founder Michael Currin, “hire great people, then let them do their jobs,” Herndon says. “Daniel is always willing to try something new and different, and I love that.”
Herndon left her floriculture foreman title years ago — but not her passion for the creative work.
“I’m realistic — I know I can’t do floriculture full time,” she says. “There are only so many hours in the day.”
But she finds time to continue to design Greenscape’s popular “living walls.” The innovative vertical gardens are the most talked-about floral feature at Raleigh’s Cameron Village retail center, where shoppers pose with them for selfies.
They show off Herndon’s skill and creativity, from an impressive 3-D hummingbird to an installation that was entirely edible, planted with fragrant herbs, crisp lettuces and juicy cherry tomatoes. One year Herndon re-created “Sunset in Venice” by Monet in flowers and created a replica of the Eye of Horus to tie into an Egyptian display at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
She loves the creativity.
“Colorful flowers attract people,” Herndon says. “Non- horticulture people rarely say, ‘Look at that really cool tree.’ But most people naturally love flowers and color.”
It’s in her nature to watch things bloom. Including people.
“I like watching the next group coming up, and I can tell them what opportunity looks like for them, long term,” Herndon says. “I moved up from foreman to vice president in 15 years, which is what so many others want to do. We show them that it can be done. There is a great deal of opportunity here.”