While many may point to the prevalence of blues music, clubs and restaurants, there’s something else that makes Clarksdale “one of the coolest places on earth.”
That would be the Foster holly trees that line the city’s downtown sidewalks, providing a colorful canopy with the stark green leaves and red berries, bringing late-winter color to a city when most of Mississippi’s downtowns are dull and gray.
That was the message delivered by gardening expert Felder Rushing, who Southern Living once included among “25 people most likely to change the South,” during his visit to Clarksdale on Tuesday, March 5.
“It’s the color, texture and the berries,” Rushing said of the many holly trees downtown. “Stick with the things that make Clarksdale what it is and gives it a sense a place.”
An author of 18 books, Rushing is a syndicated columnist, appearing in newspapers all around the state, including a weekly column in the Clarksdale Press Register. He is host of National Public Radio’s “Gestalt Gardener” program that is heard on Mississippi Public Broadcasting radio stations and he also serves as an online question-and-answer columnist for HGTV and the DIY Network.
Rushing spoke to members of the Clarksdale Rotary Club and to a group of about 40 people at the Carnegie Public Library during his stop here Tuesday.
That message of “sense of place” was prevalent during Rushing’s two presentations. He urged those in attendance to create that sense of place by the choice of plants, gardening techniques and sharing with others.
He urged those at the library, which included several member of the local garden club, to organize a plant swap in the spring and fall. He said the plant swaps are “an opportunity to share about life.”
Rushing’s advice to business owners at the Rotary Club was to go with low-care, low-maintenance plants in their planters. He said while azaleas are “pretty girls” that require a lot of care, Rushing said a nandina is just as showy and is more durable.
“Sometimes, it’s the bells and whistles that makes people think you know what you are doing,” Rushing said.
A proponent of “old lady gardening,” Rushing said he believes “gardening is real personal. It should make a person feel better.”
It’s his belief that a weed is “any plant having to deal with an unhappy human.”
An Indianola native, Rushing is an 11th-generation Southern gardener who pioneer ancestors settled this country long before Mississippi became a state. They came to the Delta in the 1850s and Rushing has made several trips to Clarksdale, including one in which he made the tire planters on the porch of the Ground Zero Blues Club.
He splits his time between his celebrated cottage garden in Jackson and a culinary herb garden in a Victorian terrace house in northern England.
