Mary Nell Jackson, a founding member of the Collin County Master Gardeners Association and 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, has excelled as a natural-born educator and leader. She fell into gardening as an empty nester and quickly developed an affection for herbs, saying she “studied herbs for nine months like I was taking a college course.”.
Mary Nell is in the Rosemary Circle of the Herb Society, co-founded the Herb Guild, and served as a Committee Member and instructor with CCMGA’s Advanced Herb Training, the first in Texas. She has spoken at district Herb Society meetings, co-taught a CCMGA Herbs Workshop program for CCMGA and the public, and co-taught new students CCMGA’s Herbs Class for many years.
Her workshop on Garden Journaling was featured at both the TXMG Conference and at Round Top Texas’ annual Herbal Forum, where she also presented Herbal Housekeeping. She has travelled around and beyond Texas to present valuable gardening programs, including “Are There Fairies in Your Garden?”, “Is Chocolate an Herb?”, and “Petromania”, about ferns.
Mary Nell chaired CCMGA’s 20-Year Reunion Celebration and has spoken numerous times at the Dallas Arboretum and the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. She also presented a workshop at the Discovery Gardens in Dallas. She also taught at the Seniors Active In Learning (SAIL) for numerous years.
When she wasn’t sharing her herbal wisdom, Mary Nell co-created and designed the CCMGA Potager Garden at Myers Park and authored articles in many local publications, such as “The Herb Society of America: The Herbalist” and “Edible DFW.” She is a Member-at-Large with The Herb Society for over 30 years, and has been published in the Herb Society of America’s magazine.