STARKVILLE — If there’s one thing Felder Rushing doesn’t do, it’s beat around the bush.

“You play in the dirt, you soil your pants,” Rushing joked to a room full of more than 120 gardening enthusiasts at the Starkville Public Library on Thursday afternoon.

The 11th-generation American gardener, who is well known for his more than 25 gardening books, his National Public Radio Show “The Gestalt Gardener,” and his “In the Garden with Felder” syndicated column – which often appears in The Dispatch – seemed to keep the crowd laughing while also sharing straightforward and practical gardening advice.

Rushing said he spent many years working with Mississippi State University’s Extension Service as a horticulture specialist and in academic horticulture settings, but he has since started teaching practical gardening knowledge that he learned from older gardeners.

“Horticulture is production oriented,” Rushing said. “… You want yard of the month, you want to fill a freezer, you want to get a blue ribbon. Horticulture has a lot of little shortcuts and nuances and efficiencies. But if you’re just here for the ride, that’s what gardening is.”

Without getting too deep into the weeds, Rushing’s advice mostly focused on keeping things simple, avoiding “jumping through a bunch of hoops.” He recommended working with plants that are native to the area and grow easily, even if they are not traditionally seen as valuable, making the area “look like Starkville.”

Rushing also held up a bouquet of daffodils he had picked from a graveyard before coming, joking that even “dead people” can grow them.

“Plants don’t need us at all,” Rushing said. “They’ll figure out where to grow, sun or shade, where to grow. Plants will figure stuff out.”

Rushing also recommended growing passalong plants, plants with value that have survived in gardens for generations because they are easy to grow and propagate, allowing people to share them. One of his prime examples was daylilies, which are often spread through this method.

Rushing also mentioned that passalong plants can become heirlooms over time, as they are passed to more and more generations.

“My great grandmother … grew a fig tree, and she showed me how to root it,” Rushing said. “My children now, both my grown children, have fig trees that they rooted from my fig, which I got from their great-great grandmother’s garden.”

A great deal of Rushing’s advice also centered around doing enjoyable things in a garden to make it more personal and fun. He referenced different funny signs, lawn ornaments and bottle trees as examples of putting something in your garden just because you like it.

These touches can provide the “personality” to a garden, he said.

SPL Director Phillip Carter said the event was co-organized by the library system, the Friends of the Starkville Public Library, Oktibbeha Master Gardeners and Starkville Town and Country Garden Club.

“It’s always a pleasure to have Felder Rushing visit our community, and especially our library,” Carter wrote in a text message to The Dispatch. “Our community has a strong and beautiful gardening history and to have access to an expert in the field of Felder’s caliber is an absolute privilege. The work and education he offers so freely is unparalleled.”

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