Pandemic, Heat Can't Stop Gloucester Twp.'s Hilltop Garden Center

GLOUCESTER TOWNSHIP, NJ — It was late March. As Ron and Connie Spriggs looked out onto the empty streets, they knew they were going to have to make some tough decisions.

The couple had owned Hilltop Garden Center for the last 34 years, but this was the first time a health pandemic had driven people inside and shut down business across the country.

The garden center, which stands at 1339 Black Horse Pike in the Blackwood section of the township, closed through May. It has since reopened and business is going well, Ron Spriggs told Patch on Tuesday.

“Things that you lost, you can’t make up,” Spriggs said. “We were closed for a few weeks. Then, we were in a quandary about if we were even allowed to be open.”

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Over 34 years, Ron and Connie have built a loyal customer base. They don’t advertise. Connie Spriggs does a little with social media, but they live by their name.

It’s a name everyone knows. Ron Spriggs, a 73-year-old U.S. Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, is part of the American Legion in Chews Landing, coached Little League in Erial and has lived in Blackwood for 65 years.

They took a hit in the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, but they’ve sold more vegetable plants than they ever have before.

“People rely on us for that,” Spriggs said.

Hilltop Garden Center follows all the health protocols set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) designed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, but the pandemic isn’t the only thing that gave them a problem this year.

“We had a tough time with all those 90-degree days in July,” Spriggs said of the heat wave that gripped the region this summer. “People don’t plant in that.”

But their business, which they built from a nearly defunct outfit in the 1980s, persevered through that as well.

They initially bought the center as a small flower shop for Connie to run. Ron was a plant manager, but after his company was bought and sold a few times, he shifted his focus to the garden center. Together, they built it into a thriving business.

With two hurdles out of the way in 2020, they look forward to what the fall will bring.

“We still don’t know where we’re going,” Spriggs said. “They say the pandemic’s going to get worse before it gets better. Then we’ll have the flu to deal with.

“What’s Halloween going to look like? What’s Christmas going to look like? Will there be a Halloween or a Christmas?”

No matter what it looks like, it’s a good bet Hilltop Garden Center will make it through.

Hilltop is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. They can be reached by phone at 856-232-8844.

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