The yard Jim Jackson saw when he returned home from work one recent evening looked strikingly different from the one he had left that morning.
He and his wife, Laura, had pulled up overgrown boxwoods and hollies with trunks like small oak trees last year, leaving barren flower beds.
Now, they are filled with a variety of plants of different colors, shapes and sizes - cleyera and dwarf yaupon, Indian hawthorne and asiatic jasmine.
The beds they occupied were contoured with curves instead of right angles, and it was pulled away from the house, ending in a small hedge of holly trees.
The Jacksons expected a change to take place. They had hired Joby Jackson, no relation, to landscape their yard.
But the impact wasn't felt until they actually saw it.
"It completely transformed the house," said Jim Jackson. "It actually made the house look bigger."
Joby Jackson, who is based out of in Winona, began landscaping in Greenwood nearly a decade ago, and his business has thrived there. He estimates that 75 percent of his business involves Greenwood yards.
"Greenwood is by far my best town," said Jackson.
Most of that success has come without advertising. He doesn't have a sign emblazoned on his work truck. He doesn't mail out solicitations.
His advertisements are in scores of front yards, patios and flower beds that appear well-crafted to neighbors and passersby. Most of Jackson's business comes by word of mouth, he says.
One of those yards is John and Georgeanne Smith's at 304 Grand Blvd. Before Jackson came last year, their front yard had shrubbery planted by Mr. Smith's grandmother in 1948.
"We dug up everything in it but four plants," says Mrs. Smith, an interior decorator who has collaborated with Jackson on a number of projects, including her church, Westminster Presbyterian.
Now, the remade lawn is crossed by a circular driveway, a stone wall and a number of admiring stares from the street.
Jackson's work is multi-dimensional. "I do a lot more than plants," he said.
He meshes "hardscapes," such as patios, driveways, fountains and wall structures, into the softer, grassy textures of yards and flower beds.
He has a degree in landscape architecture from Mississippi State University - the only active one in town, he says.
Jackson calls his work "low-maintenance and functional." As an example he points to the area where the Jacksons' Barton Avenue yard meets the bedding.
"In this yard, you can take a mower, and you don't see any 90-degree edges," he said. "You can take a riding lawnmower and run through this without pulling out a weed eater or a push mower."
Jackson and his three employees don't just plant hedges; they arrange a variety of plants according to their characteristics. Take, for instance, color.
"I try to think about what's blooming," he said. "I like to work color in there and leave places in there where a homeowner can add color with an annual bed or something like that."
He contrasts textures as well, placing plants with broad, dark leaves next to others with lighter foliage. At the Jackson's home, he has planted taller, but still immature holly trees beside the house and shorter shrubs along the front.
More than anything, Jackson has vision, according to Laura Jackson.
"It's funny how someone with a trained eye can envision what's best for you," she said. "He could tell what this house needed to enhance its image. He took a house that had a low-lying roof line, and he widened it. And he really did a good job.
"He saw things that we couldn't see."
