FAIRHOPE, Ala. — When Jason Powell was a graduate student at Texas A&M University, getting a master’s degree in horticulture, he belonged to a group called the “Texas Rose Rustlers.”

“Doesn’t that sound like a tough name?” Powell asked “Like we carried guns — and clippers.”

The crowd of almost 100 people laughed loudly, as they did often during Powell’s lecture, when they weren’t taking notes.

“Our job was to find roses that weren’t being cared for,” Powell explained.

The large group of garden club members and master gardeners traveled to the James P. Nix Center Friday from around Baldwin County to hear Powell talk about growing “tough plants” for the coastal South.

“I’m so glad to see this roomful of gardeners,” he said. “What you’ve got here in Fairhope is one of the toughest growing conditions in the country. Wind. Salt. Air. Heat and humidity.”

Powell is a talented speaker and tends an audience like he does his large plant and tree nursery in Chilton County, halfway between Montgomery and Birmingham.

Powell and his wife, Shelley (also with a master’s in horticulture from Texas A&M), opened Petals from the Past in 1994 near Clanton, Ala., the town whose water tower looks like a giant peach.

“My wife is the only person I know who can ID a plant at 55 mph,” he said. “If she sees something and says ‘stop,’ we stop.”

In addition to acres of fruit trees and antique roses, heirloom shrubs and hard-to-find perennials, Petals from the Past also has demonstration gardens and an educational center.

“They have really gone in an educational direction,” said Judy Thompson, president of Wisteria Garden that hosted the event. “They love to teach.”

Powell’s presentation gave tips on which native plants can best withstand the late freeze and drought conditions of the past year, as well as which plants Thomas Jefferson favored.

He is a walking history book on disease-resistant and especially fragrant roses that have been around since the time of Columbus.

“We don’t have to look so far forward to what to grow here,” he said. “We can look back to what our grandmothers did.”

Thompson said she took master gardener classes locally from Powell’s father, a retired professor in horticulture from Auburn University.

“I felt very fortunate to have that experience,” she said. “Now that he’s retired, he’s gone into business with his son.”

Powell recently published the store’s first catalogue, a 32-page guide to many of the plant species they sell and that can be ordered by mail.

“Plants offer us a tangible tie to the past,” the catalogue states. “A memory recalled by a color, a scent or a name can take us to those moments in our life, which were special and maybe remind us of people we love.”

Thompson said that gardening is also “a wonderful therapy.”

“You’ve heard of the little poem about one is nearer to God’s heart in a garden than any place on Earth,” she said. “When you start digging and raising plants, they become like your children. When I get in the yard digging and clipping, I forget everything that’s bothering me.”

For more information, visit www.petalsfromthepast.com or call (205) 646-0069.