Courtesy Wagener Monthly
After five wonderful years in the pulpit at the Wagener United Methodist Church (WUMC), Rev. Jim Bennett, at 77 years of age, has decided it is time to take a rest. But you won’t actually find America’s famous Weekend Gardener resting.
Bennett and his wife, Mattie host a community crop garden on their farm in Windsor, SC. Volunteers from different churches help maintain the garden and the produce is donated to the Salvation Army and a local food bank.
Bennett also has returned to broadcasting. With the help of his granddaughter Emily, Bennett produces gardening videos via YouTube under the pseudonym The Old Gardener, a nod to his years broadcasting on cable TV in the early eighties as The Weekend Gardener.
“The Lord has provided things for me to stay busy,” Bennett said. “I like to turn wooden bowls on lathes. I enjoy gardening, spending time with grandkids and family, helping them refinish furniture. I don’t have much idle time.”
Bennett grew up on a farm in Edison, GA, a town with a population similar to Wagener. He entered the Air Force as a young adult and went to Columbus, MS for basic training. While he was taking officer training classes at the Mississippi State College for Women, he met a young lady from Natchez, MS, named Mattie whom he would later marry.
After eight years in the Air Force, Bennett started a 25-year career in broadcasting at Channel 12 in North Augusta. He broadcast the Augusta National for six years, as well, and started a little cable TV station out of Aiken. One of the programs was The Weekend Gardener which took off across the United States for 13 years becoming the leading gardening show in America.
“Back then we had 4 cameras and they cost thousands and thousands of dollars.” Bennett compared broadcasting in the 20th and 21st centuries. “We had 36 people working on the show. Today we do it with only two of us and with an Apple 8. It has excellent quality, as good as the $25,000 - $40,000 cameras did.”
With the success of The Weekend Gardener, Bennett began receiving invitations to foreign countries. He especially recalls a trip to England under the Queen’s authority to visit gardens, riding along in a limousine with a chauffer and escort. The Weekend Gardener also led him to working for Southern Living, teaching at their gardening schools all across the nation.
After thirteen years as The Weekend Gardener and four years with Southern Living, Bennett was called into the ministry and began seminary. He was assigned to Methodist churches across SC and GA with WUMC being his last one.
“The Lord gave me permission to step down. If I was offered another opportunity of another church, I would have to consider it, but not at this particular juncture. I just need a rest for three or six months. The Wagener United Methodist Church was a real family of good Christian people. It felt so strange these few past Sundays that I was not with them or communicating with them.”
In the Methodist tradition, a pastor has no communication with church members for a year after the new pastor arrives. “Usually, every day as a pastor, I would get twenty to thirty emails a day and all of a sudden it was zero emails, no communication. That, and being in the pulpit, was the hardest thing to walk away from.”
Retired Coast Guard Officer Rev. Dave Fields is now pastoring WUMC.
“Dave’s well educated and is a leader,” Bennett said. “Dave has something that the Lord has given him as a talent to teach them. If they listen to him like they listened to me, they’re going to expand and grow. I pray that they treat Dave just like they treated us. That they embrace Dave and the Holy Spirit and let the church continue to develop and that they become more mature Christians every Sunday. I truly miss the family of the Wagener United Methodist Church.
“They were the most supportive and loving church that my wife and I had in this 26-year history career. Their spirit we just fell in love with. We have pastored much larger churches and they had good spirits, but this one just matched ours like it was part of us.
“You do what you have to do and go where you’re led and look to the good Lord. Things unfold wonderfully. I look forward to the opportunity to go back to Wagener as a civilian and not as a pastor. In a year I can go back and be a member of the congregation and go from there.”
Bennett wrote many gardening columns for the Wagener Monthly and we appreciate all he did for this paper. He was sad to hear that the newspaper is shutting down.
“Wagener is left out of so much; I feel like the paper gave Wagener some identity and if there’s any way they can continue with that, they should. Wagener is in a distant corner of Aiken County, it really needs some industry, some development.
“I’m sure the newspaper helped the real estate and everyone in the businesses of Wagener. The Aiken Standard has always been very nice to me and a great newspaper, very supportive.”
Bennett’s wife, Mattie, continues to work at USC-A. The couple has two daughters, three grandchildren and one great-grandson.