Macon Magazine

36 maconmagazine.com | February/March 2025 STEP INTO JOHNS ON'S GARDEN CENTER, WHERE FAMILY THRIVES ALONGSIDE THE PANSIES. G r o w i n g a n heirloom STORY BY SIERRA STARK STEVENS | PHOTOS BY MATT ODOM all the employees I worked with there seem to have done – to the gentle giant's open-hearted TLC. It's a hereditary Johnson family method that gruffly challenges us to grow, calls us on any bullshit, and fondly reassures us along the way. But the 30-year- old pencil cactus, 40-year-old erythrina, and his mother's 70-year-old angelwing begonia might offer evidence to support the hypothesis. While I worked there for less than a year, every time I've set foot in the garden center for new veggie starts, herb seeds, or rare roses, I track new potting soil and revived purpose out on my boot soles. Whenever I trail Terry's always-chorin' movements through the perennials, I can count on a chat about the wren that used to perch on my head while I made hanging baskets out on the yard. As per Terry's hanging basket advice, each had "a thriller, a filler, and a spiller" – meaning a showy tall plant in the center, a cloud of blossoms underneath, and a vining plant to flow down the sides and sway in breezes. He'll update me on any new birds he's seen by the potting table. He'll tell me I remind him of his daughters when they worked there in high school and college; that he was always glad he hired me because I was so kind to animals. If that sounds like something special for someone to tell you, make no mistake. It is exceedingly special to me. And somehow, Terry's heart is big enough and his memory so expansive that he recalls something to admire in just about anyone who steps foot in his shop or hires his landscaping team. Unlike my short season, Tim Rozier's been growing at Johnson's for 33 years. With dapper horn-rimmed glasses, gold tooth glinting in an easy, quiet smile, and deep Southern drawl pacing out A re your daffodils peeking their green noses out from your garden yet? Terry Johnson's probably are. And, if your Macon daffodil patch has been planted for many years, chances are, his family's responsible for that springtime joy in your yard. You see, Johnson's Garden Center has been in his family since 1959. Ever since Terry's parents, Rees and Florrie Johnson, "broke ground along a dirt road between Vineville and Ridge, next to a petroleum company and across from the two old maids who lived on Hartley Avenue," wrote Ed Grisamore, Macon Telegraph columnist, in a profile of Florrie in 2009. It was before cancer at last claimed her, just before she'd outlasted her thirteenth cash register in the shop. Since the Johnson's love for others expands the limited idea many have of family, it will soon pass to the next generation once more. Biological researchers say that plants respond to love. They grow faster, stronger, and some even display tropism (movement) toward positive stimuli. If "love" is a stretch for you, think gentle speech, uplifting music, and reassuring touch. Under the garden center's aging polyethylene hoop house roofs, criss-crossed with senescent overhead irrigation, I've seen how Terry Johnson whistles new life into plants, young and old. To a merry, subconscious tune, he towers over the SunGro-covered table, swiftly potting up seedlings, giving each a reassuring last press to safely tuck in their roots – this time, in a vessel big enough for them to grow. Maybe it's anthropomorphizing to say the plants respond as positively to that treatment as I did – as

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