SCOTTSVILLE – Not far from one of the entrances to the square in downtown Scottsville, Kim Ragland works all through the day to keep her plants healthy and colorful.

Kim’s Nursery, which Ragland established with her parents, opened in 1989.

Ragland said she has been taking care of plants most of her life.

First, it was on her parents’ tobacco farm in Logan County, where she also raised cows and pigs. In the late 1980s, Ragland and her first husband, while still living in Logan County, worked at a nursery in Bowling Green, giving her the experience she’d need to run a nursery of her own.

“I think we were there for four or five years and before that we were farmers, so it just seemed like the right thing to do,” she said. “I’ve always loved being around nature and watching things grow.”

After her husband’s death, she moved to Allen County, where her parents lived, to be closer to them. Shortly thereafter, she and her parents, Stephen and Faye Lewis, started Kim’s Nursery.

Her main motivation for starting the business was to gain financial independence to improve her life and the lives of her children.

“I just wanted to better myself for them,” she said.

Ragland said she wanted to use her own skills to make a living. “It would have been easy for me as a single mother to maybe have gone on welfare and collect food stamps, but that’s not how I was raised. My pride kept me from that, and that’s why I started a business,” she said.

The business sells a variety of small trees and shrubs, which are primarily kept out front, and flowers like hydrangeas, geraniums and begonias, some of which occupy a greenhouse.

For much of the business’ existence, Ragland wasn’t directly involved. She moved to Morgantown about 1993 and lived there until 2015.

One of the main reasons for Ragland’s move back to Allen County was her desire to keep the nursery going when it appeared her father was ready to retire.

“Dad was ready to retire, and I didn’t want to give (the business) up,” she said. “There was too much to let it go.”

Despite her father expressing an interest in retiring in 2015, he has yet to do so. He works at the nursery almost every day, she said.

Ragland said she puts in a lot of work to operate the business. Running the nursery requires watering the plants twice a day unless it rains, working landscaping jobs and driving to suppliers to inspect plants she intends to sell at the nursery.

“If we’re buying a tree or whatever, we handpick it ourselves. We don’t just have it shipped into us and not know what it looks like when we buy it,” she said.

“It’s never ending,” she said. “It’s like milking cows. You got to be there.”

Ragland said rejoining her father at the nursery was a welcome change when she moved back from Morgantown, saying that her return felt like a rebirth.

“I felt like I found myself again,” she said.

– Follow Daily News reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdaily news.com.