Force of nature

Did you ever know someone who worked as a boll weevil sexer? Neither did I until I talked with Carol Reese. More on that part later.

Carol grew up on a dairy farm outside of Starkville, Mississippi. Her mother decided that she wanted to raise her seven kids on a farm, not because they were farmers. Carol’s father was an engineer with his own business. He was an excellent businessman, partly credited to her mother’s ability to spell and correct his correspondence, while she ran the farm. She did that with great skill, becoming an excellent mechanic along the way, all the while taking art classes at the local university. Carol grew up thinking everyone’s mother could paint, sculpt and fix tractors. Her dad was no slouch, developing a formula for making cement out of local limestone and raised enough investment money to build Mississippi’s only cement plant.

Carol says she was encouraged by a family “who believed the world was yours if you go for it, and education was foremost.” Her artist mother taught her to see “all the shades of green in the trees, and the different shades of blue in a thundercloud, also, how to grow a garden.” Carol's maternal grandfather was a country vet but an avid gardener as well and wrote a gardening column for a while. He was a showman and dynamited his garden every spring to break up what he called “his hardpan.” His specialty was growing a wider palette of edible plants than the usual southern gardener of that time, including asparagus, boysenberries and sugar snaps along with plenty of fresh peanuts for boiling. Her mammy grew dahlias, poppies and daffodils along with roses and gardenias.

Education

Carol’s first stint at college was as a major in English, and she introduced herself as “Ah’m uh Mississippi State Bulldog through and through.” That came to an abrupt end when she opted out of a too young marriage and ran off with a rock and roll guitar player to spend the next 11 years “wasting as many brain cells as girl could and still be able to walk upright.” She says her parents rescued her from her party girl ways and never gave up on her.

When asked how she came to horticulture she says that it never crossed her mind until she grew tired of being a counselor to other alcoholics after going through three rehabs herself. It was then she remembered the young Carol, that spent her days as a “wild tomboy that rode bareback on her mare, Diamond, exploring the fields and woods.” She would collect unusual plants and wild artifacts while out on Diamond to bring home and show her mother. This interest led to her return to Mississippi State in her mid-thirties where she found horticulture. There she found supportive mentors in her plant materials professor, Dr. Lester Estes and department head, Dr. Richard Mullenax. They spotted potential and awarded her teaching assistantships and grants to pursue graduate degrees. Teaching classes about plant materials and design, as well as greenhouse and nursery management gave her confidence in those topics and in speaking to a group. She says that sleepy students didn’t pay attention unless she engaged them with humor and entertainment.

Prior to her teaching assistantships, Carol was a boll weevil sexer. Who knew that could be a profession? It required determining the boll weevil’s gender so that the males could be sterilized and released to mate, helping to eradicate them. She was good at it, and ended up overseeing a roomful of women sexing boll weevils at the Mississippi State Boll Weevil lab.

Eventually she finished all the courses needed to complete her doctorate, and accepted a job with the University of Tennessee as an extension horticulture specialist at the West Tennessee AgResearch and Education Center, intending to write the dissertation after starting the job. Unfortunately when she sat down to write the dissertation, she realized the equipment she used to store critical data had malfunctioned. It would take another year of treatments and bud collection to recreate the data. Living in a new state with a new job, she wasn't in a position to repeat the field work. So she shrugged off the doctoral degree.

As to who inspired her besides her parents, she has a laundry list of conservationists and writers, like John Muir, Sue Hubbell, Wendell Berry, Joe Hutto and Jane Goodall to name just a few.

She thanks so many horticultural giants who encouraged and forgave her late start in the horticultural life before she knew a thing, including Tony Avent, Michael Dirr, Dennis Werner, Paul Cappiello, Mark Weathington, Todd Lasseigne, Ozzie Johnson and more.

Writing and speaking

As an extension horticulture specialist, she did a lot of teaching and writing. She wrote a weekly gardening column for the Jackson Sun for about 20 years, and became a popular speaker, noted for humor.

“Carol is an engaging and dynamic public speaker and garden writer,” says Dennis Werner, J.C. Raulston Distinguished Professor Emeritus at North Carolina State University, and a plant breeder with more than 25 cultivars patented and released. “Her presentations and articles convey her passion for gardening, and demonstrate her broad knowledge of horticulture based on a lifetime of personal gardening experience. Carol is effective at challenging the audience and reader to question long-standing gardening dogmas, especially the pervasive misinformation in the gardening press regarding the use of native and non-native plants in managed landscapes. On a personal level, Carol is a kind and gracious person who respects all creatures great and small, with a particular love for dogs.”

Another testament to her speaking prowess comes from a legend in the horticulture world. Horticulturist, plant breeder, author and frequent Nursery Management contributor Michael Dirr enjoys Carol’s talks.

“Carol Reese hits the podium running, words streaming like fireworks, with staccato delivery,” he says. “She has the ability to relate to any audience for she lives/breathes/enjoys/practices the art and science of gardening. Truth-telling, rather than hyperbole, with a healthy infusion of southern humor is the hallmark of a Carol Reese lecture. Sit back, hold onto the chair, and enjoy the ride as only Carol can deliver.”

Her latest speaking passion is fighting what Carol calls the native plant purist movement because she believes it is “dangerous and ill informed.” She calls her latest talk “Native Plants: Facts, Fallacies and Foibles.” She provides evidence that plants have been moved around by the birds and beasts for millennia, and the only constant in planetary time is change.

Carol lives on 118 acres of “wildness” as she calls it, not far from Jackson, Tennessee, with a pack of 17 rescue dogs and cats where they can roam to their hearts content. She says these once homeless dogs might be the more expensive habit of her other major expenditure, collecting lots of plants. A recent obsession is ordering oddball things to grow from seed, and experimenting with different seed sources. Propagation from cuttings is a passion as well as edible plants. The result is an eclectic orchard of blueberries, blackberries, jujube, serviceberry, goumi, cornelian cherry and Asian persimmon, plus heirloom apples and pears, plus a large vegetable garden.

If you find yourself in the Jackson area with some kind of wonky cool plant, she says she will do her best to give it a good home.

“Carol is one of a kind,” says plantsman, horticulturist and garden writer Daniel Hinkley. “Knowledgeable, powerful, articulate and funny. She’s the right combination needed to make a difference in our horticultural community.”