Jason Reeves: Tending Relationships Through the Garden
Written & Photographed by Maddie Mcmurry
“Gardening is so therapeutic...There's something about starting a little seed and ending up with something towering or beautiful. It’s like a little miracle in this tiny package,” Jason Reeves, Garden Manager at the University of Tennessee Gardens in Jackson, said.
Jason Reeves is many things —horticulturist, garden manager, educator, international tour leader, landscaper, and an advocate for community connection through plants. But if you ask him, the work isn’t about titles. It’s about educating people so they can find something meaningful in the garden and fall in love with getting their hands in the dirt.
Growing up, I watched my mom begin gardening when I was a young teenager. She began with a small raised garden bed and then expanded every year, producing lots of fresh produce in the summer. It quickly became a so-ace for her. A space where she learned lessons of life by the rhythms of the garden. I remember always having an abundance of juicy cherry tomatoes colored yellow and red to eat. I had forgotten what a real homegrown tomato tasted like until I recently bought some cherry tomatoes at our local West Tennessee Farmers’ Market.
I never realized how therapeutic working in the garden was for my mom until she moved 9 hours away from me a few years ago. Gardening has been her safe place in a new home. It's grounding. It occupies her time and gives her something to nurture from the ground up. Her children are all out of the house, and summers as a teacher are a season with more free time, which she fills with hours outside — watering, weeding, keeping bugs and critters away, and all the other tasks involved in growing something from the dirt.
For Jason, being in the dirt is deeply ingrained in his blood. His childhood was spent on a family farm between Huntingdon and Clarksburg, and his formal training was at UT Martin,with a bachelor's degree in grounds management, and UT Knoxville, with his master’s in ornamental horticulture and landscape design. He also spent his time post-grad with internships at prestigious institutions including the Missouri Botanical Garden and Longwood Gardens, which is the largest garden in the United States.
“I grew up learning to love plants with my parents and my grandparents, who also lived on the farm with vegetable gardening,” Jason said, remembering his childhood fondly. “My mother and grandmother, we would grow flowers in the vegetable garden or just in rows with zinnias or strawflowers or gladiolus bulbs. That really got me excited about horticulture. I'm 50 years old now, so I've been in it most of my life.”
Jason has even gardened abroad in New Zealand, a place he has visited multiple times and calls one of his favorite climates in the world. Even with his travels all over the world, Jason remains deeply connected to West Tennessee. He still lives near his childhood home and recently purchased a farm where he is slowly building a new garden of his own that will be open to the public seasonally. He’s already planted over 13,000 daffodil bulbs on the farmand many different trees, and he has plans to use some of the land for growing Christmas greenery.
Jason started working at the UT Gardens in October 2002 and was hired to create the public botanical gardens you see in Jackson today. The goal of the gardens is to show residents of West Tennessee what can grow in their area, to provide them a place to come and enjoy the gardens, and to provide research material for growers, landscapers, and nurserymen. The research associates at the UT Gardens are responsible for testing different plants to see how they grow in our environment.This helps local landscapers and nurseries to know what to plant in yards and businesses so that they will thrive for years to come.
They also have two large plant sales every year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and a summer celebration every other year. Their parking lot is uniquely designed with big island beds with plants labeled clearly, giving accessibility to those who may not be able to walk around the property but still want to enjoy the beauty of plants.They want every person to come and soak in the power of getting in the garden, in the dirt, in nature. The lessons someone can learn by just sitting in a garden are endless.
When I was interviewing Jason, he drove me around the property to see different areas where they grow plants or create spaces for people to enjoy. Itwas filled with the hustle of summer
interns who had just arrived, a school group there for an educational lecture, and several staff members pulling weeds and planting new flowers. Peoplewere learning, experiencing, growing.
What makes Jason’s work standout isn’t just his expertise — it’s his generosity. Whether he’s designing low-cost, low-maintenance landscapes for first-time homeowners or teaching someone how to swap out one plant for another with fewer disease issues, he always brings it back to sharing knowledge. He believes that gardening is therapeutic, grounding, and something that can help people, especially those going through hard times, to find healing and hope.
“Sharing my experiences is very gratifying tome... You learn so much by doing.I can read all day in a book and sit in a classroom all day long, but until you are actually out there doing it yourself, you really don't know,” Jason said.
Jason is also deeply involved inthe Master Gardener Program, working with dozens of volunteers who give thousands of hours of service each year to make the gardens what they are. Jason has a group of Master Gardener volunteers they call the “greenhouse crew” who put in between 2,000–3,000 hours of service a year. For many of them, it’s more than volunteering — it’s friendship, mentorship, and community.“
A lot of those Master Gardeners have become very dear friends of mine,and we eat dinner at their houses or travel together,” Jason said.
Jason also has grown quite the following on his Facebook page, over 13,000 followers in fact. People all over West Tennessee have found a place to be educated simply by Jason posting his educational content on a public platform. He usually receives around 5–6 private messages a day that he tries to respond to. His advice is practical,encouraging, and always grounded in the thought that success in gardening is within reach for anyone if you’re willing to get your hands in the dirt.
“Having that community on Facebook has really made me slow down. If I'm typing something out or reading up on something, because I don’t know everything, it makes me learn. And when I'm taking photos of a plant to post, I have to slow down and really focus on that plant or flower,” Jason said enthusiastically.
“Gardening is so therapeutic... There’s something about starting a little seed and ending up with something towering or beautiful. It’s like a little miracle in this tiny package.”
Gardening connects people. It connects Jason to students, to Master Gardeners, to the community, to people across the world on garden tours. It’s about relationships, not just plants.
Despite the wealth of knowledge Jason already has, he is quick to note how much he still learns every day — from successes, from failures, from others around him. He sees value in slowing down, paying attention, and letting the beauty of what is grown in the ground be both a teacher and areward. And I would say, we could all learn the lesson of slowing down and enjoying the garden that is life, growing right around us day by day.