Nancy Reeves isn’t just a gardener. She’s a master gardener. She isn’t just a master gardener, she is the president of Master Gardeners of Lowndes County.

But if you think she is a walking repository of gardening expertise you’ve got the wrong idea.

“No, no, no,” she said, chuckling at the thought. “I was born with a brown thumb. Ask my husband. Most of my life, if I brought a plant home it would die. I don’t have a good history, but I’ve certainly gotten better.”

With spring just around the corner, area nurseries are beginning to see heavy traffic, not only from veteran gardeners but from novices, too.

It is the latter group that Reeves can most closely relate. If she is a role model, it is for those who are making their first tentative steps into the world of plants. There is no better way to get a jump-start on learning how to garden that through the Master Gardeners’ program, she said.

Master Gardeners chapters operate in all 50 states and are administered by university Extension Services. There are chapters in all three Golden Triangle counties. To maintain Master Gardener certification, members must complete 20 hours of class and perform 12 hours of community service annually.

Even if you’re not up for that kind of commitment, the online classes, provided by Master Gardeners through the Mississippi State Extension Service are available to those who might describe themselves as “gardening curious.”

“You can go through the whole program and get certified, but you can also just take the course or, if you want, pick and choose which courses you want to take,” Reeves said. “If you sign up for the course, they give you this big, wonderful notebook that they go over in the classes. You can refer back to that. I do that all the time.”

Reeves, 65, became a Master Gardener almost by accident.

“With our kids grown and on their own, I was sort of looking around for something to get involved in,” she said. “A neighbor invited me to join the garden club (Galaxy Garden Club in New Hope), so I thought, ‘Well, if I’m going to be in a garden club, I probably should learn something about gardening.”

She began her first Master Gardeners class in 2017 and has been hooked ever since.

“I’m still not a great gardener and certainly not the best gardener in our club by a long shot,” she said. “But I learn new things all the time, a lot just by being around the other members, just hanging around with them, talking about what we are doing, visiting their plots now and then.”

Reeves describes her gardening style as eclectic, a combination of flowers and vegetables seasoned liberally with a healthy dose of experimentation.

Nancy and her husband, Mike, do their own composting, raise their own earthworms and maintain raised beds and a small butterfly garden in the corner of their property.

“We’ve grown all sorts of things — eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash,” she said. “We also have grown things by accident. We’re not too careful what we put in our compost, so we’ve had beautiful sunflowers grow out of the compost, watermelons, all sorts of things. We even grew a papaya tree by accident. It’s always a lot of fun to see what comes up.”

Reeves has been a member of The Master Gardeners of Lowndes Country for a relatively short time and does not profess to be an expert gardener. What she brings to the group as president is a boundless supply of enthusiasm.

“Anybody can do this,” she said. “This is not rocket science. Really, gardening is just one part of it. It’s a way for self-fulfillment, exercise, mental health, social connection. There are just so many good outcomes an individual receives. I like being around people who enjoy getting outside, don’t mind working and getting their hands dirty, people who get excited to talk about worms and compost and honeybees. That’s my jam.”

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].