Bryant & Margie Jenkins

Sometime around 1965, Bryant and Margie Jenkins started their nursery business with a planting of Wax-leafed Ligustrum in the field.  They were dairy farmers at the time, but also grew watermelons as a cash crop.  The Ligustrum crop brought a good return, so they invested some of the money back this time into Azalea liners to grow in the field.  Bryant fertilized the Azalea crop as he would have fertilized a corn crop, killing every plant.

They started in the late 1960's a small container nursery on land about 3 miles from their home.  This was mainly Margie's project.  In 1974 they initiated the construction of a new house on the site of the their present older home where they were living.  Margie and Bryant were doing much of the work themselves and had two women working in the nursery.  The two women employees lost interest and quit.  Since sales were slow anyway, Margie just turned off the water to the plants and closed the nursery.  The dairy was taking care of the family.

They moved into their new house in January of 1976.  That summer Margie enrolled into a plant and design course under Dr. Neil Odenwald, commuting back and forth from Amite to LSU until completion.  Filled with new knowledge and inspiration, Margie had a clear vision and understanding of what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.  In the spring of 1977, she returned back to the nursery, hiring six women employees to help her.

The focus of the new nursery was to produce native, new and unusual, and old fashioned plants for the landscape industry.  Most of the customers today are landscape contractors.  When Bryant was in the final stages of his battle with cancer, the nursery was put into a limited liability company, in which, Margie was the Manager.  She was 82 on her September 2003 birthday and there is no mention of retirement.

Information adapted from an article in The Azalean/Winter 2003 Issue, page 84.