The Flower Ladies of Chapel Hill

1955 (photo by Roland Giduz, via UNC)

1960s

1968

Circa 1969

Circa 1969 (that's UNC Chancellor House purchasing flowers)

1970 (via UNC's Yackety Yack)

September 1970 (photo by Woody Clark, UNC Daily Tar Heel)

1986

1986

"Chapel Hill's 'famous flower ladies' are a dying breed. In the late 1960s and early 1970s a city ordinance forced sidewalk peddlers into the alleys, but the North Carolina National Bank invited the flower ladies to move into the plaza. Rosie Bell Stone spent the past fifty years selling flowers just off Franklin Street. Her mother started the tradition in Durham about sixty years ago and eventually it spread to Chapel Hill. There used to be eighteen flower ladies working at one time, but now there are only a few. According to Rosie Stone, the flower ladies' daughters don't want to take over the tradition. The flower ladies grow the flowers themselves and have to work late and get up early. Although the number of customers have also dwindled and their buying habits have changed the flower ladies passion for selling flowers remains the same." (From a February 1986 article by Jim Wicker in The State magazine.)