Walter Reeves, Georgia gardening guru, has died at age 74

Georgia gardening expert Walter Reeves, who spread his gospel on WSB radio and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution over a span of decades, died from Parkinson’s disease at age 74 on Friday.

WSB radio, which aired his Saturday morning garden show from 1994 to 2020, officially announced his death.

“He was like your favorite bathrobe and slippers you put on Saturday morning with your cup of coffee,” said Condace Pressley, a longtime WSB radio executive. “He gives you ideas about what you want to do with your lawn and your garden. His gift was making goals attainable.”

Radio personalities once had black and white publicity photos; these depict Walter Reeves during his time at WGST (1986 to 1993) and WSB (1994-2020). (Courtesy)

Pressley said Reeves loved doing live shows at Pike Nurseries and meeting his fans. “He was always approachable and loved talking to people,” she said.

Reeves, a University of Georgia Cooperative Extension agent from 1980 until 2005, also hosted a GPB gardening show “Your Southern Garden” from 1998 to 2011 and penned a weekly column for the AJC from 1991 until the print edition ended last year.

In his final AJC column on Christmas Day, he wrote, “I bid you farewell with a bit of simple advice: ‘Green side up, brown side down. It makes all the difference.’”

Danny Flanders, a former home and garden writer and editor for the AJC who edited Reeves’ columns for many years, admired his “down-home approach to talking about gardening” that “took the mystique out of it.”

In 2001, Walter Reeves co-authored a book with Erica Glasener called “Georgia Gardener’s Guide.” (Courtesy of Thomas Nelson)

Reeves, a UGA graduate with a degree in chemistry, authored or co-authored nine books on gardening over the past quarter century. He also possessed a self-deprecating dry wit. In his bio on his website, he facetiously described himself as “the Flatfoot of Flora, the Gumshoe of Garlic, the Sleuth of Sassafras, the Bloodhound of Botany and the Sherlock of Shrubbery.”

Erica Glasener, his co-author for two books, loved how he tinkered with his own garden’s aesthetics using found objects.

“He had a bottle tree before they were popular,” she said of the outdoor feature created by placing colored glass bottles on the branches of a dead tree like a giant garden ornament.

Ashley Frasca, his phone screener for eight years before taking over WSB’s weekly gardening show in 2020, aired a tribute show celebrating Reeves on Saturday morning.

“Walter had this special quirkiness and natural curiosity,” she said. “He was this larger than life personality. People would greet him like he was a rock star.”

He had a knack for swatting away old wives’ tales, her favorite one being the time a caller asked him if she could use Juicy Fruit gum to keep moles away. He also answered the same questions over and over again as if he had never heard them before.

“He was a Southern gentleman who was super kind and super patient both on and off the air,” Frasca said.

Walter Reeves made frequent trips around Georgia to talk about gardening. The authority on gardening in the South loved doing live shows and meeting his fans. (Courtesy of walterreeves.com)

In an AJC story from 1994, he said his specialty topics were vegetables, fruit trees, grass and nuisance wildlife, such as the squirrels in the attic or the deer eating the corn.

At the time, he said his strangest call was from a woman who was certain a neighbor was poisoning her tree and wanted to get revenge. Her question: What’s the best way to kill the neighbor’s tree?

The story also described Reeves’ garden — which featured rare woodland ferns, persimmons, camellias, vegetables, fruit trees, berries and a respectable collection of perennials.

Walter Reeves stands in his own Atlanta garden — which features rare woodland ferns, persimmons, camellias, vegetables, fruit trees, berries and a respectable collection of perennials. (Courtesy of Erica Glasener 2018)

Reeves grew up on a small Georgia farm in Fayette County raising chickens and cows and learning how to tend gardens from his parents, both teachers. He became a 4-H camp counselor, then a 4-H adult leader, and credited 4-H talks from fifth grade for helping him in a lifelong career that focused on teaching and communicating about nature.