Denise Weir has been running her shop, Denise’s Flower Shop, on Pleasant Street for 27 years. Twenty-seven years as of May 4, to be precise.
Weir says she “has always enjoyed running her businesses”, she also owns The Enchanted Forest on State Street and owned the now defunct Department 34 clothing store.“And that’s how I plan on staying, hopefully for many years,” she says. “I love my businesses. Why would I want to retire? I am just so lucky to do what I do.
“Weir is from Newburyport and says as a youngster she was downtown “maybe three times a week,” visiting the five and dime stores. She loved stationery products, she confesses, but she was over it before she actually opened her first business.
“Newburyport was a fun place to be
there was the Rexall (drug store) with a soda fountain. Even though downtown wasn’t pretty it had great stores.”Newburyport in the 1960s included the drug store and Dedes, a hole-in-the-wall on lower State Street, where one could purchase a bus ticket to Boston. “Everything was by bus,” she explains, adding that residents got all their staples on Pleasant Street back then “making it the place to be”. Kray’s, H.W. Pray, and Kennedy’s (a food store that sold butter and cheese) but not meat products, were among the businesses located on the street.
The 57-year-old Weir grew up on Eagle Street, across from Newburyport High School. She added a candle shop to the flower business about two years ago, after State Street Candle and Mug went out of business. And even before that, The Enchanted Forest was part of Denise’s Flowers, to fill the void, she says.”In the flower industry we needed to diversity. It used to be just silk flowers,” she notes. She’s happy, she’s busy and “she’s all about Newburyport” even though she moved to Salisbury. It was all about space for a garden, not because she’s not all about Newburyport.
