Macon Magazine

February/March 2025| maconmagazine.com 39 "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." "She was the one I impressed the most. She had faith in me. That changes somebody," he continued. "That's what made me start learning the plants more, because I was on the yard. And in the shop, I was always listening and learning from everything they said. If they was talking, I was listening. It just kept me motivated. From there on out, I was always working, working, working." He spins around on the tired swivel chair, palms raised, taking in the space where he's spent the majority of his adult waking hours – pre-dawn to dusk, for six, or usually seven, days a week. Just like that, he never stopped. "Still working, working," he chuckles, coming back to patient, contemplative stillness. While I'm confident Tim's sharpness and drive would have brought him success in whatever he put his mind to, he credits Terry and Florrie for his growth. Humility and pansies – they're never in short supply on Hartley Avenue. Terry comes in, clippers under one arm. I ask him why Tim's the one who will carry on his legacy when he retires. Tim and Terry have been through some tough times together. They've both made mistakes, Terry explained. "But he's never given me – not one moment has there been – when he gave me any reason not to trust him. He signs the checks now. He runs the store. I know he'd never do anything to jeopardize what we have. That's hard to find... He's family." I spent three hours that day talking Tim in the office, Terry popping in and out, periodically breaking to follow Terry around the greenhouses. I knew auto- transcription wouldn't be able to parse the Deep South in their accents, so I'd spend days getting all the history down on paper. They both laughed so hard that Terry cried, and Tim had to get up out of the swivel chair to slap a knee, talking about the shenanigans of an employee named Roosevelt. They reminisced about Tim's son and other family members working there; Terry's daughters stopping in every year for the obligatory prom dress picture with Tim – still posted right there, pinned to the cabinet above the Dell computer with a little bit of dirt in its keyboard. They analyzed the ups and downs of running a family business through six decades of changing times – from freezes that wiped out all their stock, to the advent of big box stores, teleflorists, and online shopping. They got choked up thinking of Florrie. Maybe one day, getting all the stories written out will be my gift to them. For you, dear readers – I'd encourage you to enrich your life and your garden this spring with the heirlooms you can find there ("har-looms," as they're called at Johnson's). Every time you go, you'll leave a little richer, having grown a little better, than you were when you came in. thoughtful responses to any question, he's become the steadfast face of the business. He mans the shop while Terry's M.O. of ceaseless movement has him out on jobs or choring on the yard. To hear Tim talking chemical dilution rates, soil composition, and species cultivars, you'd think he'd have a degree or three. Yet even technical knowledge is accessible to customers the way Tim explains it. Perhaps that's because he learned everything by word of mouth – by listening to Terry, Rees, Florrie, and shop patrons. This man, too, has a heck of a memory on him – a brilliance, warmth, and steadiness that made him their kind of person. Way back in '92, when Tim was 17, his uncle wanted him to stay out of trouble. Growing up helping his family landscaping business on the weekends, Tim had some experience with plants. Tim says that Unc gave him a dollar for the bus and told him to go see "Rees down at Johnson's" for a job. Terry – like his father, who founded the nursery, and his son, who grew up working there – has the first name of Rees; it was Terry who hired Tim. "I was a real troubled kid. I came in looking like a little gangster. That's the real talk. But he put me to work right then and there," Tim said. Initially put on landscaping and corporate indoor plant leases with Terry's team, across dozens of commercial and residential properties spanning Macon, Tim soon got into trouble on a job. So, Terry sent Tim back to the store to help his mother Florrie, the matriarch of the business. She ran the store with an eagle eye for customer service and a bookkeeping acumen to rival the most fastidious of corporate accountants. "And from that day, I was not allowed to go nowhere. But I was allowed to stay." I'm interviewing Tim in the photo- and handwritten-phone-number-covered walls of the shop's office, behind the Christmas cacti, left of the azalea fertilizers. He looks to Florrie's photo, pinned to what might be a corkboard, if it were visible past the dozens of well-loved faces from the last 65 years that cover it. "I was mad; I felt cooped up. But at the same time, I have to thank her for doing that. It kind of changed my life, though, Sierra," he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose and nodding, solemn, toward Florrie's high school portrait.

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