It has been 17 years since Lisa Grugin lost her father, Walton Pile, to cancer. But the co-owner of Meadow View Greenhouse & Garden Center in Lenoir City continues to carry his influences with her to this day, especially when it comes to running the family business.

Although their livelihoods were in different industries—Walton was a dairy farmer, Lisa works with plants and flowers—their jobs have one important aspect in common—taking care of living things. And in that respect, Lisa learned from her father, especially in the course of helping out on the dairy farm as a child, that one must work according to nature’s schedule.

“One thing you learn as the child of a farmer is that things have to be done, and it doesn’t matter whether you feel like doing them or not,” Grugin says. “Cows had to be milked, hay had to be hauled, things had to be done.”

These days, she applies that same work ethic to her own business, which she runs with her husband, Rodney.

“I learned from my father that there are no excuses,” she adds. “If you’re going to do something, you do it right, to the best of your ability and until it’s done.”

Another lesson she learned from her father was the value of determination and perseverance. Despite having lost an arm and the use of an eye and nearly losing a leg, Walton Pile was, as his daughter describes, “tough as nails.”

“Nothing ever handicapped him,” she says. “He was never affected by that, and until he got sick with cancer, I never remember seeing him sick a day in his life.”

The Grugins—both U.S. army veterans—operate the retail end of a business that also includes Lisa’s mother, brother, sister, brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Meadow View Greenhouse & Garden Center offers a full line of plantings and gift items for the home, including annuals, perennials, tropicals, shrubs and trees.

All of the annuals and most of the perennials are grown on the site of her father’s Fentress County farm, which today accommodates the garden center’s wholesale operation. Lisa’s brother started the wholesale side in the 1980s, and when Rodney left the Army after Desert Storm, the Grugins started running the retail end at Meadow View, which is located between Lenoir City and Dixie Lee Junction.