Adrienes Flowers & Gifts owners brightened Noblesville

During a holiday season years ago, Moffett and Stephen Craig had a squirrel problem. A green squirrel problem, to be specific.

It wasn’t quite The Great Squirrel Stampede of 1822, when hordes of squirrels swarmed Hamilton County and devastated cornfields. But the Craigs, who own Adrienes Flowers & Gifts, a floral shop in Noblesville, suddenly found themselves swamped with plush green squirrels with tails shaped like Christmas trees.

“I bought green squirrels,” Stephen said. “They were cute.”

“It was fine to have maybe a half-dozen,” Moffett responded. “But no. One hundred and forty-four. They were here forever. We were giving those babies away. And the funny thing was, this dog tore one apart, and it didn’t have a squeaker. But, anyway, you have to be careful about letting certain people order things.”

The tale of the green squirrels is just one of the stories the Craigs are telling as they prepare to retire after 35 years of operating Adrienes in a 133-year-old house at 1249 Conner St. just east of Noblesville’s historic courthouse square. They hope to finalize a deal to sell the shop by the end of the year, but one way or another, the Craigs will step away Dec. 31.

This time of year, aside from flowers, Adrienes has Christmas-themed gifts lining the shelves along with less seasonally specific items, such as angels, birdhouses, lanterns and wind chimes. In the small back room, Moffett and Stephen, both 77, work on flower arrangements alongside seven staff members who create designs and take orders over the phone.

“People will come in here and say, ‘Oh, it smells so good in here, the fragrances,’” Stephen said. “We don’t smell it anymore. We’re around it so much.”

Adrienes, the only full-service floral shop in Noblesville, provides services for births, birthdays, proms, weddings, anniversaries, parties and funerals, and delivers to customers around the metropolitan area. The Craigs have formed relationships with wholesalers around the area, such as Indianapolis-based Marvin’s Flower Gardens, that provide floral stock to the shop.

“We’re a full-service florist, so therefore, whether we want to have the poinsettias or not, we have them,” Moffett said. “We keep red roses around because guys are always getting in trouble.”

Terry Walters, a designer at Adrienes the past 4-1/2 years, has worked in the floral industry since 1983. She said Adrienes has a small-town feel that is different from the other floral shops she has known.

“It’s more hands-on with customers. You get to really know your customers,” she said. “When they walk in the door, you’re like, ‘Two roses? What color today?’”

Noblesville Chamber of Commerce CEO Bob DuBois said owning a flower shop has given the Craigs an opportunity to connect with families at their highs and lows.

“Stephen and Moffet are perfect individuals for that because they’re compassionate,” he said. “They understand the human side of it. Flowers are physical entities, but there’s more than just the flower behind the creation of that for those real, critical moments in life. So, they were the right people for the job.”

Change in career

The Craigs are lifelong Noblesville residents, except for their time in college at Ball State University (Moffett) and Purdue University (Stephen) and a four-year stint living in Tipton, much to Moffett’s chagrin at the time.

“She said, ‘The two places we’re never going to live or work: One was Carmel and the other Tipton,” Stephen said.

“Lo and behold, at the time, schools wanted English-speech-theater combination teachers all over the state of Indiana,” Moffett replied. “Who did I marry? A guy that taught agriculture.”

Even after they returned to Noblesville, owning a floral shop was not part of Moffett’s and Stephen’s plans in the years after their marriage in 1969. She was a speech professor at the former IUPUI and continued until 2022, while he farmed and taught agriculture classes at Tipton Junior High School.

But by 1989, with three children and two teaching careers, they realized they needed more money. So, they offered to purchase Adrienes from Moffett’s parents, Jessie and Stanley Robinson. The Robinsons, along with Moffett’s brother, Doug, opened the shop in 1978.

Adrienes is not named for a person; rather, Jessie Robinson determined a flower shop named Adrienes would be the first listed in the phone book.

“I said, ‘Mom, as much as I hate to say this, we need to make money. Can we buy the shop?’” said Moffett, who is named for the USS Moffett, a destroyer her father sailed on during World War II.

Over the years, the Craigs learned the art of floral design through classes and conferences. They joined Downers Grove, Illinois-based Florists’ Transworld Delivery and Los Angeles-based Teleflora, a pair of floral wire services, retailers and wholesalers that serve florists nationwide.

Robert McNamara, the late co-founder of local floral company McNamara Florist, helped them gain their footing. For a time, the Craigs operated a second store on East 96th Street in Fishers.

They provided flowers to famous Hoosiers, such as former Indiana Pacers great Reggie Miller, who had a large vase of lilies delivered to his house every Friday. The legendary musician Elton John called the shop in 1990 to order flowers for the funeral of Ryan White, a Kokomo teenager who became the face of public education about the AIDS epidemic.

In Noblesville, they provide funeral floral arrangements to seven churches, and they are members of organizations like the Lions Club and the Noblesville Chamber of Commerce. Moffett is a member of the Tri Kappa social sorority and performs as Mrs. Claus each Christmas season.

“We’re very involved in the community,” Stephen said.

Eric Gale, pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Noblesville since 1993, noted that both Moffett’s and Stephen’s families have a history of community involvement in Noblesville going back to the 19th century. Both Moffett and Stephen have performed in the choir at the church, which has been in Noblesville since 1848 and at its location on the same city block as Adrienes since 1893.

“They’ve had that history of the Old Town Noblesville and have tried to do what they can through their business, through their church activities, through their other community activities, to maintain that Old Town Noblesville flavor and feeling,” he said.

The floral shop became a gathering place for family, and for customers who became friends. Their sons Aaron and Cameron worked in the shop, and their grandson, Johnathan, now a college student, still helps from time to time.

Warren Fremling attends the First Presbyterian Church of Noblesville with the Craigs and visits their shop whenever he wants to purchase a bouquet of flowers for his wife, Cynthia.

“We love their shop, but walking into a floral shop is not just a festival for the eyes. It’s a festival for the senses,” he said. “It was always a pleasure to come into their shop, and they were always, always very good to the customers and spent a lot of personal time with them that you don’t always get with a chain shop.”

Even after 35 years, Moffett still watches videos and learns about how she can use a different tool to put together an arrangement. Sometimes, she freelances her way through a difficult project.

“I have my MacGyver moments where I know it can be done,” she said. “I just have to figure out how it’s going to be done.”

She said customer tastes have changed over the years, which has meant the shop’s owners and employees have needed to adapt.

“In our business, 90% of what we do is through listening and understanding what they really want,” Moffett said.

Stephen enjoys stretching out a little and creating different designs. He said it is important to him to “be a step above” the competition, such as grocery stores.

“I think the trademark here is the fact that [customers] find something new and different every time they get it,” he said. “I went and got some flowers for somebody last Saturday, and they said, ‘Oh, those are pretty.’ There’s just still that joy in seeing the colors, combinations and textures.”

Moving on

Through 55 years of marriage—and 9-1/2 years together before that—Moffett and Stephen Craig often know what the other is thinking.

“We can’t get too far apart because, really, we complete our sentences and help the other person remember what they’re saying,” Stephen said.

That doesn’t mean they agree on everything. He is a Republican, while she is a Democrat. And they’ve never really settled on whether Adrienes should have an apostrophe.

“It should be an apostrophe-S,” Moffett said.

“But it’s always been without the apostrophe,” Stephen responded. “That’s only 45 years ago. Too late to change now.”

However, they both agreed that it is time they step away. The couple started thinking about retirement two years ago after Stephen received a prostate cancer diagnosis.

“It’s going to be a transition for us when we’ve been here so long,” he said. “We do care because it’s not like selling beer. It’s personal connections. We have all these people.”

Both Moffett and Stephen remain hopeful that Adrienes will continue after they retire. They are working with a potential buyer to purchase the shop. They want to ensure that if Adrienes lives on after their retirement, it will remain a full-service floral shop and will not be moved outside Noblesville.

“When we first said that we were selling it, a lot of these people that came in, once I showed them the cutting room where you have to process the flowers so that they stay good for a long time, they said, ‘Really, all of this work?’” Moffett said. “It took a really long time to find somebody that wanted to stay here.”

Mayor Chris Jensen, a lifelong Noblesville resident, said the Craigs are the definition of “the Miller Way”—a nod to Noblesville High School’s mascot, the Miller.

“The Craigs have been an institution in our community for decades,” he said. “What you see daily at the flower shop is exactly who they are: genuine, gracious and community-minded.”

After they leave Adrienes behind, Moffett plans to resume teaching speech classes at Indiana University Indianapolis, while Stephen plans to do some work for the Hamilton County Historical Society and potentially look into being a guest teacher for agriculture programs at Hamilton Southeastern High School or Hamilton Heights High School.

“Who knows? Time will tell. I don’t want to load the plate too quick, too early,” he said.

Whatever they do next, both said they want to remain involved in the community they care about. This month, they served as grand marshals of Noblesville’s Holiday in Lights Parade.

“It was easy for us in lots of ways,” Moffett said. “But I think you’ve got to love your community and give to your community, and then they give back to you.”•