Hardware and horticulture make an unlikely blend, but the combo seems to be blossoming for Chris Ferrari and Paige Hamilton, who operate Hamilton Hardware of Watertown and Hamilton Hollow Flower Company.

The two fled Nashville last year after finding a bit of acreage in the countryside just a few miles outside the smallest town (no red lights here) in Wilson County.

Last October the couple took over the local hardware store. A few months earlier they already had begun selling cut flowers to local florists. Hamilton, a professional accountant, handles the business side, while Ferrari, who spent 23 years in the entertainment field with a number of topnotch acts, mans the store and does most of the gardening.

He was laboring on the farm when he noticed the hardware store was for sale.

“We laughed about it and said, ‘Wouldn’t that be fun?’ A week or so later, I give this guy a call and check it out, and through conversations we ended up purchasing the hardware store. We wanted to put roots down here and see what we can do,” said Ferrari, who had tired of the music biz.

Hamilton, who does bookkeeping for small companies and handles their payrolls, noted, “My office is my headquarters in the hardware store. When we moved out to the farm I didn’t have an office. We had an old shipping container where I had a little corner. It was a blessing to get the hardware store.”

Her first impressions of Watertown and the green hills and valleys that surround it?  

“I always thought I was a city girl. I was kind of impartial. It’s a rural, small town, nice and quiet and calm,” she said.

About taking the step of operating a hardware store, she confessed, “I was worried. Anytime you get into business you have to think about profit. I’m the accountant, so I’m always thinking numbers. We’ve rebranded the name and put our touches on it.”

The couple reopened the 3,000-square foot store in mid-October. It nests on the bottom floor of the Thompson-Bogle Ashworth Masonic Building (Comer Lodge #417 F&AM). The building was originally home to the Princess Theater, which opened in the late 1940s and closed around 1961. Among other businesses to reside here were a furniture store, a men’s clothing shop and Oakley Flowers. The upstairs portion is the Mason’s Lodge, the organization that owns the structure.

Walking into the hardware store, customers will find an explosion of goods that includes pocket knives, concrete mix, plumbing supplies, shovels, hammers, chains, wheelbarrows, rakes, electrical supplies, trim line for lawn trimmers, rain gauges, work gloves, drills, wiper blades, locks, hinges, screws, bolts, cleaning supplies, car batteries, painting supplies, brooms, birdhouses and birdfeed.

Hamilton and Ferrari believe their decision to take on the business was a wise one.

“We love it. The town is super nice. The people have been great. We’ve already been here about eight months and we have been able to help people out. There are a lot of older folks here. We’re here to help people solve a problem,” said Ferrari, whose father worked in construction when he was young.  

“People say, ‘I don’t want to have to drive to Lebanon.’ Lebanon might as well be 100 miles away.

If the hardware store went out, the town would really be disappointed. It’s an old small-town cornerstone. We’re right where we want to be and we are going forward. Next spring we plan to have a garden center.

“The first few weeks folks came not to buy but asked, ‘Where do you live? Where are you from?’ I grew up in a small Pennsylvania town with Amish, so I feel right at home. The fun part of this job is just getting to talk to folks. Nothing fancy, that’s for sure. Just a small-town hardware store. We’re trying hard to keep that old small-town hardware store feel, and we’re trying to update the store with more inventory.”

Of his previous career in music Ferrari said, “I had always been kind of connected to it through a local promoter. I worked festivals for years. I did some concerts here and there and jumped off with Chondra Pierce for a tour in 1999.   

The Lancaster, Pa., native has served as tour manager and production manager and worked in artist management. The father of five moved to Nashville in 2011. After working with Pierce, he got into Christian music with such artists as Third Day, Mercy Me and Michael W. Smith. Switching to country, he assisted SHeDAISY, Lady A, Mary Chapin Carpenter and managed Jake Shimabukuro, a ukulele player from Hawaii.

Hamilton, a Cookeville native, went to college at Tennessee Tech for a few semesters and then moved to Knoxville where she earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting. She came to Nashville in 2002 and waited tables at Boscos and Sunset Grill. She started her accounting career with LBMC in Brentwood.

“I always call it internal accounting. I do bookkeeping for firms and was at LBMC for three years and bouncing around a lot working for local Nashville businesses. Then I got a job with an entertainment business management company, an advertising firm out of Chicago that had an office here, and I worked as locations coordinator on a TV show, ‘Women of the Movement,’ which was shot in Mississippi,” said Hamilton, who met Ferrari on a dating app in 2021.

In May, Ferrari’s daughter, Shannon, moved to Tennessee and has been helping between the farm and the store.

“She’s kind of a third hand for me on doing things on the farm or at the store if I’m not here, and she helps with social media things and displays,” he said. Also pitching in is Watertown native Malachi Davis.

The hardware guy with the green thumb said he began prepping this year’s crop in the winter.

“Everything we’re using, I have had to reclaim. We planted in 2023 and got some things started and found a couple of florists and started the operation on a small scale. I always had flower gardens and love being outside. I do the majority of the heavy manual labor. We do a lot of seed planting in the greenhouse and then transplant that out. We do successive plantings so we have things for a longer period of time.”

For this summer, their flower selections will feature zinnias, celosia, sunflowers, coneflowers, cosmos, black-eyed Susans and dahlias.

As for balancing the workload between town and country, Ferrari says, “I probably do more at the store because I have to when it’s open, and the farm I have to work around. It’s a 60-40 kind of thing.”

Last year they sold their flowers to six florists in Watertown and Lebanon.

“It was a trial-and-error thing. We’re learning what they need and are looking for. We’re going late June through October. Ideally, we want to lengthen that season. It’s a three- to five-year program,” said Ferrari, who is considering opening the gardens at some point so the public can enjoy cutting their own flowers.  

The seedsman truly loves getting his hands into the soil and says about his flowers, “As hard as you try to kill ’em, they want to grow. Some are the tiniest little seeds, and they become these amazing plants. The natural beauty of the whole thing is really appealing. It’s like the phrase ‘stop and smell the roses.’”

Hamilton is not as quite as eager as her mate to get her hands in the dirt, but says, “I’m trying.” The biggest challenge, she says, about their garden is “you have to watch the weather every day. We had six weeks of no rain last year, so we had to go into town and bring water out. We don’t have water on the farm.” On the other hand, she says living in the countryside allows her to “to see the stars at night.”

Ferrari winds down by “hanging out outside. And I like to read. I don’t listen to music.”

However, he does have a few mementoes of his days in Music City hanging on a wall behind the hardware store’s check-out counter.

Gazing at music posters of Lady A, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Four Voices and SHeDAISY, the hardware store owner/greensman says, “That’s my past career. This is my new career.”    

HAMILTON HARDWARE OF WATERTOWN

Location: 122 E. Main St., Watertown

Hours: 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday; 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday.

Phone: (615) 237-0107

Source: mainstreetmediatn.com