Sami-Luqman Muhammad stands Wednesday afternoon in front of his business, Garden of Via at 260 Lisbon Street in Lewiston. He is hoping to keep his plant store in business despite his recent arrest on drug charges. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — When Sami-Luqman Muhammad was 7 or 8 years old, he started occupying his time with the care and growing of plants.

“My grandmother had a green room in her house. It had a whole bunch of windows and plants everywhere,” Muhammad said Thursday. “When she was tired of me or upstairs, it’d just be me in the green room just exploring the plants. She’d cut me pieces off and I’d take them home to my mom and I’d watch the roots grow slowly on them.

“It just stuck with me. I’ve been doing this my whole life. I’ve got a natural green thumb, I guess.”

One day after police announced that Muhammad, the owner of the Garden of Via plant store in Lewiston, had been arrested on charges of trafficking in cocaine, he was alone in his shop at 260 Lisbon St.

He couldn’t talk about his legal troubles much while the charges were pending, Muhammad said. But he did insist that not everything revealed in a Maine Drug Enforcement Agency press release on Wednesday was 100% accurate.

He figures he’ll have his day in court soon enough. Until then, he hopes that all the plans he had for the Garden of Via — and for the community — are not dead in the water.

Like the plans he had with a local yoga studio to combine the love of meditation with the love of plants, or the plans he had to help people who are dealing with addiction, as Muhammad himself once was.

“I was working on a workshop where people in recovery, like myself, could come in here and either swap plants or do re-potting and that kind of thing,” he said. “And I had a vision setting up a table for children and teaching them the importance of plants and how they can clean the air around you.”

As of Wednesday, all those plans seemed to be in a holding pattern. It will all depend, Muhammad imagines, on how the public reacts to the news about him.

Before the MDEA announced Wednesday that Muhammad had been caught dealing cocaine — including through direct sales to undercover drug agents — business at Garden of Via had been brisk.

Muhammad had been posting photos of his plants — from Indonesia, Thailand, Ecuador and Columbia, to name just a few — on the company Facebook page, and interest in his inventory had been on the rise.

It was generally agreed, by those in the plant-living community, that Garden of Via carried the types of plants that couldn’t be found elsewhere in the area.

Sami-Luqman Muhammad, in doorway at far right, stands Wednesday afternoon in front of his business, Garden of Via, at 260 Lisbon St. in Lewiston. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Muhammad had planned a grand opening on May 2. He was already in the process of ordering 150 new plants and a whole bunch of balloons to hang in front of his store.

“I don’t know how it’s going to go for the grand opening now,” he said Thursday. “But I’m going to get it all, anyway.”

Muhammad is originally from Boston where, he admits, “I was definitely a detriment to the community.”

He has lived in the Lewiston area for a time now and says he wanted things to be different here. He wanted to be a positive influence on the city and to help uplift the people here.

“My ultimate goal for this place was to have something different for Lewiston and Auburn,” Muhammad said. “I know we have that bad rap here. … Everybody wants to leave this place.  … But why not stay and try to make it a little bit better?”

Muhammad was arrested April 14 and charged with two counts of aggravated drug trafficking. Police said that when they searched his store, they recovered 150 grams of cocaine and crack cocaine as well as quantities of MDMA, or ecstasy.

The MDEA did not respond to inquiries about the case against Muhammad.

After his arrest, Muhammad was ultimately released from the Androscoggin County Jail on $5,000 bail and has since gone back to running his store.

He says in recent days, he knew the news of his arrest would soon become known. But when the story was published in the Sun Journal on Wednesday and word started getting around in the community, Muhammad, whose girlfriend is pregnant with his child, said his first instinct was to hide from it.

“I started to leave,” he said. “But my pops was like, ‘Sit your ass down and be a man.'”

So he remained at the store until closing time Wednesday and opened up again Thursday, waiting to see how business is going to be with the shadow of criminal charges hanging over him.

At least two of his regular customers, reached by the Sun Journal on Thursday, said they will continue to patronize his store.

“People make mistakes,” said one of them, “and should have to opportunity to rise above them.”

After news spread about Muhammad’s arrest, he immediately took to his Facebook page to address his customers. He wants to continue to be a valued member of the community, he said. He wants to see his plans, conceived of more than a year ago, come to fruition.

“Unfortunately, the court of public opinion deems you guilty until proven innocent,” he wrote. “Although we are all far from perfect, a work in progress in many aspects of our lives, I opened The Garden of Via to uplift the Lewiston/Auburn area with something positive and never done before. My passion for plants gave me the realization that I should share my expertise with the larger community.”