LIFE

Monroe native Nellie Neal is a nationally known garden expert

William Caverlee
Special to The News-Star

When garden expert Nellie Neal isn't writing books or magazine articles or hosting her own radio show, she will probably be found in her back yard in Jackson, Mississippi, setting out a flat of tomato plants or propagating some new flowers.

Neal was in Monroe recently as part of an all-day program at the Biedenharn Museum & Gardens. The day had threatened rain, but, happily, for the large crowd of gardeners in attendance, the rain held off, and the resulting time spent among the Biedenharn's astonishing collection of plants and flowers made for a fine outing.

Neal has written five gardening books, including "Deep South Month by Month Gardening" and "Organic Gardening Down South." Her most recent is "The Nonstop Color Garden" published by Cool Springs Press in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition, she's been a contributor to six more gardening books. No surprise when she mentioned that she's working on a new book, which will come out next year.

Neal was born and reared in Monroe, attending Lexington Elementary School, Lee Junior High School and Neville High School. She headed to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she received a bachelor of science degree, majoring in English and horticulture.

She's been interested in gardening for as long as she can remember: "I've been gardening my whole life. I gardened with my grandfather. . . . When they built that house (in Monroe), my grandmother gave him a twenty-foot-wide row in the back by the fence, so he had his vegetable garden all along the back there. He was just a really wonderful man. . . . That's where it started."

After college, Neal held a number of jobs in horticulture in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, as well as in Richmond, California, and Oakland, California. She's been living in Jackson since the early 1990s. She writes in her bio: "She and her husband, Dave Ingram, live and garden on one beautiful acre in Jackson, MS. Together they have four adult children, one beautiful granddaughter and three bossy cats."

The term "Garden Mama" is a name Neal coined when establishing her website, www.gardenmama.com.

Neal juggles multiple vocations these days. She is a garden expert for the Garden Compass Mobile App, based in San Diego, California. She's the host of "Garden Mama," a live radio program on SuperTalk Mississippi (www.supertalk.fm). She's a contributor to The Clarion-Ledger, The Christian Science Monitor and "Mississippi Gardener Magazine."

Her topic at the Biedenharn was "Top Down Color Year Round," the theme of one of her books. Neal explained: "The idea of this book is that you need to have color in your garden. The whole point of putting color in your garden is because it's very personal. Your garden is the most personal thing you'll do. And 'Top Down Color Year Round' is my philosophy about it."

If you spend even a short time talking with Neal, it quickly becomes clear that her life in gardening is a life of joy. Sun, rain, potting soil — these are day-to-day realities for her. Every bit of gardening lore she writes about or imparts on the radio or speaks of during personal appearances derives from hands-on experience.

A few comments from Neal during our conversation:

"My grandmother grew blue hydrangeas and they're still just about my favorite flower."

"My mother grew collard greens in the flowerbed."

"Gardening is an adventure. And for people who sit at desks five days a week — many of them have told me that they find the garden to be this wild world, that they can just go out there and enjoy, because it's not structured."

"I can't live without tomatoes."

"I can't live without lettuce either."

"Sweet olive! — the first thing I planted in the house that I'm in now, one by the front door, one by the back door."

"Confederate jasmine will knock you flat down. It's a beautiful plant and it smells wonderful."

When I asked her if she had a favorite flower, Neal said that she was often asked that question and didn't really want to answer, except to say that her "favorite flower is whatever is in bloom today."

When I pressed her, she admitted that she was especially drawn to any flower "that changes color during the course of its bloom." Plants like "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" and "Butterfly Rose."

While at the Biedenharn, Neal ran into several of her Monroe friends, and she mentioned to me how easy it had been for them to find common ground even though they hadn't seen each other in years.

Monroe was their bond, she explained. Their home, the place where they had received excellent upbringings.

"The reason why we can look at each other and talk like we've been sitting around talking, even though we haven't, is because we have this incredible common experience. We have this incredible commonality of being raised in a really magic place."

Author, radio host, lecturer and Monroe native, Nellie Neal hasn't forgotten her first home.

William Caverlee has been writing features for The News-Star since 2010. He is a contributing editor of The Oxford American Magazine and the author of "Amid the Swirling Ghosts and Other Essays" (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press).