Master gardeners, advertisers, City of Meridian employees and others gathered in the Northwood Country Club on Thursday for one purpose: to beautify Meridian and Lauderdale County. 

They discussed the desire for more recycling, cleaning up blight and, most importantly, how to get the community to sign up for it. 

“Our purpose is to look at our community and see what we can do to make it prettier, to make a good impression,” Betty Lou Jones, who leads the Town and Country Garden Club as well as the Keep Meridian/ Lauderdale County Beautiful organization. “Ladies and gentlemen, we must have that attitude and sense of pride in our community… today is one of the beginning points of that.”

The two civic organizations invited Jeff McManus, the director of landscape services at the University of Mississippi, to speak at a Thursday luncheon and share his vision for beautification. 

Under McManus’ leadership, the University of Mississippi has won recognition from national organizations and magazines for being “America’s Most Beautiful College Campus,” as awarded in 2016 by USA Today. The key to this transformation, McManus said, was getting each employee to recognize their role on campus. 

“When I got to Ole Miss, I found employees in the bushes, smoking… one was looking for deer,” McManus said. “They weren’t bought in. They were thinking, ‘I only got 30 years and then I can retire.’ “

McManus said many prospective students to Ole Miss cited the campus’ appearance as a great attraction and McManus cited a study that found 62 percent of students made a decision based on how the campus looked.

“Our staff knows they’re doing more than cutting grass or pulling weeds, they’re doing something bigger,” McManus said. “What they’re really doing is attracting (students).”

McManus’ message resonated with attendees such as Donna Owen, already an active member of the Friends of Bonita Lake Club and the local Audubon chapter, which dedicates itself to bird conservation. 

“He instills pride in his staff, it doesn’t matter what they’re doing,” Owen, who works for a local ad agency, said. “We’re all the groundkeepers of our city.”

Owen said that her husband traveled for his job and she frequently got the chance to compare Meridian to cities across the country.

“I think everybody is a part of the solution and our community definitely needs the help,” Owen said. “The most unsightly areas to me are the exits and entrances of the interstate and the highways. Those are really the first thing you see coming into our community. And everybody thinks about visitors and what they think but we’re the ones living with it every day.”

Similar to how McManus brought his staff in on his vision for Ole Miss, Owen wanted to see the same commitment in the community, across ethnic, socioeconomical and professional levels. 

“The litter patrol isn’t just your front yard, it’s wherever you see it,” Owen said, recalling how her father would frequently stop the family on the way home from church to pick up litter. “It’s the empty lots and homes and businesses… I’m ready to do something.”

This personal buy-in was what would ultimately help the community operate like his staff at the University of Mississippi, McManus said. 

“It’s getting people invested and letting people have a say. People always appreciate having the chance to be heard,” McManus said. “And you have to have good leadership. Someone who can talk about how that vision will affect and improve the community.”

With this meeting marking the first of many small community meetings, Jones said that’s what the organizations hoped to do. 

“We want to identify, from the community, what the priorities are for our community,” Jones said. “We want to have more, smaller meetings about what our community wants when it comes to beautification, litter control and recycling.”

Those interested in joining these efforts can call Jones at (601) 917-4344.