Mellie Mac’s: New Location, Same Unique Vibe
By meg hale brunton
Photo Credit: Meg Hale Brunton
Across the railroad tracks, on the corner of Black Mountain Avenue and Terry Estate Drive is the new home of the whimsical Mellie Mac’s Garden Shack. Mellie’s is a well-known local spot to find a brand new shrub or flower to spruce up your yard, or even enjoy a glass of wine with a friend amongst the flowers. The recent move from its previous location on West State Street offers Owner and Proprietor Mellie Macsherry plenty of sunlight for her 20,000 plants and more room for her patrons to socialize.
Mellie, a native of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, discovered her love for nature while in boarding school on top of a mountain in Sewanee. She found Western North Carolina in 1999 after thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. She settled in Wolf Laurel and began working at the ski resort and doing landscaping work on the golf course. Mellie had so many customers request she landscape their homes that she started her own landscaping business.
In 2006, Mellie moved to Black Mountain after getting a job as the grounds department manager for Ridgecrest Conference Center. She became acquainted with Mary Mason who owned Mason’s Lawn and Garden at the time. Mary had been trying to sell the business to Mellie for years and finally threatened to close it down if she didn’t buy it. With a new baby on the way, it was a big decision for Mellie. “Even though I had a brand new baby (my fourth child), I bought the business because I really wanted it,” she says.
Mellie took over the business in 2011 and turned it into what is known today as Mellie Mac’s Garden Shack. Over the years, Mellie Mac’s has become a well-known spot for locals to shop for the latest additions to their gardens. Reminiscing on her journey thus far, Mellie is awestruck at how far she’s come. “I don’t know how I did it,” she remarks, looking back. “I know that I had a lot of great help because we transformed it.” Mellie says she had a lot of help from her mother, not only with the business and her kids, but also with inspiration, since she had grown up watching her mom own and operate her own interior decorating and wallpaper business.
Even though she had help, the business struggled financially in the beginning. Some of Mellie’s regular customers suggested she add a wine bar to help drive traffic. In 2015, Mellie did just that and added a wine bar known as unWINE’d at Mellie Mac’s. It turned into a hit amongst locals and tourists. Soon Mellie Mac’s became the location for drum circles, book clubs, weddings, birthday parties and celebrations of life. The business was doing so well in fact that they bought a second location in 2019. The week before the foundation was to be poured for the new location, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the country. The shutdown was particularly hard on Mellie Mac’s since plant nurseries were not deemed an “essential business” at first.
So, Mellie decided to switch gears. Instead of starting a second location, she left the first property behind and moved her business to [the new space] in downtown Black Mountain. “It is manifesting into a cool spot,” Mellie says of her eclectic shop. For her, it’s the plants she loves. “The plants are the fundamental reason for what I do.” Mellie believes the plant business is particularly important not only to the exponentially growing town of Black Mountain, but also to the post-pandemic world where growing your own food and having more garden than yard have become priorities.
In the future, Mellie hopes to shift her focus toward educating the public about plants (particularly native plants) and how to grow them. “My main goal is to help people learn about nature and pollinators, and how important WNC is to the rest of the country,” she explains. “Helping the little people – the insects and the pollinators – the things that not a whole lot of people think about that we need for survival as a human race, and spreading that word, it’s very, very important.”
Through it all, Mellie has never lost her love of nature, or her connection to WNC. She also prioritizes partnering with as many other local businesses as possible. “I’m a big-time ‘positive-proximity’ person,” she explains. “Working together as a community is a big part of what keeps me going.” Through her work with plants, Mellie hopes to not only beautify the world around her, but to improve it for every person, animal and insect.
For more information on Mellie Mac’s Garden Shack, visit their website: www.melliemacsgardenshack.com
Gardening Tip:
Be patient! WNC people plant too early. If you are a person that just has to plant early, plant perennials, not annuals. If you do, you have to take care of your plants prior to all those late Spring freezes by watering them well the day the freeze is expected, covering them with a tarp or sheet overnight, and using stakes to secure the cover so that it doesn’t touch the plant, but instead, domes over it. If you can wait to plant, plant after Mother’s Day.
