Cruising through Poplarville, you might notice a brilliant garden across from the community college. Visitors—producers, home gardeners, even students taking prom pictures—have been drawn in by the MAFES South Mississippi Branch's award-winning trial gardens since their establishment in 1997.

Drive a little farther into the property, and you'll see greenhouses, fields of sugar cane and other crops, and an office building for the horticultural research faculty and staff. The station, co-located with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, is one of seven coastal units operated by the university's Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, or MAFES.

"We're primarily a research station, but we're also driven by the university's land-grant mission to share our research with the larger community," said Dr. Patricia Knight, director of Coastal Horticulture Research for the Coastal Research and Extension Center and research professor in Mississippi State's Department of Plant and Soil Sciences.

Engagement in an evolving landscape

The gardens are a success story. Scott Langlois, a senior research associate at the station, helped leverage the local Master Gardener volunteer community to elevate the gardens' national profile. After a 2016 visit to LSU's research station in Hammond, Louisiana, where he learned about their Master Gardener Workday program, Langlois began hosting workdays and tutorials for the Pearl River County Master Gardeners.

"The more time they spent in our gardens, the more they wanted to help on a larger scale," he said. "In 2018, they got involved in designing, planting, and tending to our All-America Selections display garden, which has won a landscape design competition three out of the six times we have entered. Their work has brought interest and publicity to our work with ornamentals."

Equally important to the station's community events, with programs tailored to a variety of audiences, are the personal interactions that take place there.

"We are open to the public daily during daylight hours with several events scheduled throughout the year including the blueberry jubilee in June, an ornamental horticulture field day in October, and, more recently, a poinsettia open house in December," Knight said. "These events give us opportunities to showcase our research to the community and hear their feedback."

"Some of our best opportunities to learn come from conversations with producers and home gardeners who attend," added research associate Jenny Ryals. "If several people approach me with the same question about a particular pest or other issue, those conversations are very informative."

"Some of these interactions have led to research studies," added Haley Williams, also a research associate. "For instance, we're working on bunch grape, muscadine, and blueberry propagation studies, some of which has been funded by the Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium, that resulted from onsite visits with individuals struggling with propagation in their home gardens."

Williams has found additional opportunities visiting blueberry producers looking to diversify their options in the wake of increasing competition from producers in other states and countries.

"With more competition at fresh markets, they're looking for other places to send their fruit," she said. "We're looking at value-added products like wine, which are lacking in our state but have potential."

Producers are still a key audience for the team, but transitions in the industry over the last decade have changed how scientists reach them.

"Most local producers today are small, family-based operations. They can't always attend our events, so we're going to trade shows to present our research and visit with them about their problems and concerns," Knight said. "Building relationships, whether they come to us or we go to them, is critical to our research."

In addition, the virtual workshops introduced during the pandemic and led by Dr. Eric Stafne, a research and extension professor in plant and soil sciences and small fruits specialist, continue to draw a crowd of 150-200 participants five years later.

"We've adapted our programs to meet our communities where they are and respond to their needs," Knight said. "While our commercial audience is shrinking, our consumer audience is growing. Research has shown that people who started gardening during COVID continue to be involved in the gardening community. Attendance at our events reflects those trends, so we aim to provide information for both audiences."

Branching out through partnerships

Since its inception, the station has maintained a close working relationship with the USDA Agricultural Research Service—a partnership which has only strengthened since the 2006 opening of USDA's Thad Cochran Southern Horticulture Laboratory.

To illustrate the partnership, in 2011, an invasive fruit fly called spotted-wing drosophila was problematic for local blueberry growers. Stafne reached out to the entomologist at the USDA station to collaborate on a solution.

"Through that partnership, we were able to identify the problem and develop best practices for managing the pest," he said. "Other research and education opportunities have grown from the relationship with USDA, and they have always been happy to assist."

The horticulture group is also part of the Southern Regional Small Fruit Consortium, which provides opportunities to collaborate with scientists from universities across the Southeastern U.S. and expands their scope of research and outreach.

Grounded in science, Rooted in community

Picture a small group of men hovered around a steaming vat of freshly-pressed raw sugar cane. One ladles the boiling liquid through a cheesecloth and into a large pot, where it will cool into a thick, sweet syrup. It is 1918—the same year that the MAFES station was moved from McNeill to its permanent home in Poplarville.

In the mid-1980s, the station acquired many of those heirloom cane varieties from a shuttered USDA facility in northern Mississippi and has grown them ever since. Today, the station observes a renewed interest in the nearly-lost practice of past generations.

"We're still growing known, named varieties that are hard to find," Langlois said. "Making syrup is a practice that binds these small communities together, and people come to us to learn how to keep that tradition alive."

Locally crafted spirits are another tradition gaining popularity, and the station has recently sold sugar cane grown in Poplarville to a local rum producer, resulting in a 100% Mississippi-made value-added product.

Although the horticulture team is focused on providing solutions through research, they also value providing sound information to the public.

Business coordinator Elsie Davis—often the face of the station—has taken thousands of questions from the public in her 38 years of work there.

"My interactions with the public have changed over the years, but I continue to field questions and route the person to someone who can answer them," she said.

"Sometimes people come to us with questions they could look up online, so we have an obligation to provide good information and context that they can't get from Google."

From sugar cane to traditional and experimental small fruit crops to award-winning ornamentals, the research conducted in Poplarville is firmly planted in developing horticultural knowledge. But it also thrives on branching out and engaging with everyday Mississippians, who drive the need for that research.