Stephen F. Austin State University’s SFA Gardens will host the monthly Theresa and Les Reeves Lecture Series at 7 p.m. Thursday, August 13, in the Ina Brundrett Conservation Education Building at the Pineywoods Native Plant Center, 2900 Raguet St. in Nacogdoches.
Scott McMahan, owner of McMahan Nursery in Atlanta, will present “Climbing Asian Mountains, Fording Rivers and Fighting the Elements: Moments from a Plant Hunter’s Diary.”
A resident of Decatur, Georgia, McMahan is an extreme plant enthusiast. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English from Wofford College and an associate degree in horticulture from Spartanburg Technical College in South Carolina. He was a propagator for a large wholesale grower for five years, as well as the nursery manager at the Atlanta Botanical Garden for several years.
McMahan left the Atlanta Botanical Garden in 2003 to open his own business. Located just north of Lake Lanier, McMahan’s Nursery specializes in hardy, unusual perennials, shrubs and trees in the Southeastern United States. He has traveled to China, Japan, Taiwan, India, Bhutan, Thailand, Vietnam and various locations in the Southern and Northwestern U.S. in search of rare finds. He enjoys pushing the limits of what will grow in Zone 7 of the United States Department of Agriculture’s zone system that helps determine plant hardiness and assists gardeners in defining which plants are well suited for specific climates.
In fall 2009, McMahan opened Garden*Hood, a full-scale retail nursery and in-town plant boutique located near Zoo Atlanta. The nursery was named Best Place to Buy Plants in the “Atlanta Magazine” 2009 issue and also won both the editor’s and people’s choice award in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Best of the Big A poll for 2010. More recently, Garden*Hood won Best Garden Shop in Creative Loafing’s 2011, 2012 and 2014 Best of Atlanta issues.
The Theresa and Les Reeves Lecture Series is held the second Thursday of each month at SFA’s Pineywoods Native Plant Center. A rare plant raffle will be held after the program. The lecture is free and open to the public, but donations to the Theresa and Les Reeves lecture series fund are always appreciated.
Parking is available at the nearby Raguet Elementary School, 2428 Raguet St., with continual shuttle service to the Ina Brundrett Conservation Education Building.
For more information, call (936) 468-1832 or email grantdamon@sfasu.edu.
