Charlotte readers followed her advice for 50 years. Beloved columnist has died.

Nancy Brachey entered journalism when men dominated the field.

The longtime Charlotte Observer reporter-turned-columnist started her more than half-century career in south Florida, joining the Observer on the courts beat in 1969.

“Think how hard it must have been for a woman to be a newspaper reporter in the 1960s, particularly on the news side,” close longtime friend Harry Greyard of Charlotte said Tuesday.

“She was fiercely independent,” Greyard said, explaining how Brachey not only survived but thrived in the profession. She eventually became the Carolinas’ go-to expert on all things gardening, her lifelong passion and field of expertise.

Nancy Ann Brachey, reporter, columnist, author, and elder emeritus at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, died early Tuesday at age 80, her church announced. She was in hospice care after a lengthy illness, friends, former colleagues and her twin sibling said.

She pursued her passion, and readers followed

“Nancy Brachey’s Guide to Piedmont Gardening ,” published in 2000, remains a must read for beginning and seasoned Charlotte-area gardeners. The book highlighted a career in which she’d built thousands of followers across the Carolinas.

Charlotte Observer readers lugged their droopy plants into the newsroom, where Brachey, in seconds, diagnosed what ailed them, former longtime colleague Richard Maschal said. He joined the Observer in 1969, around the time Brachey did.

“It was amazing,” Maschal said of Brachey’s interaction with readers forlorn over their wilting plants. “She just had the skill, and she became extremely popular.”

“She was a stalwart,” Maschal said.

Sandy Hill was Brachey’s editor at the Observer for several years and edited her seminal book. She “was a pleasure to edit, always cheerful and eager to improve,” Hill said.

“Secure in her expert knowledge of all things botanical,” Brachey “made it her personal mission to gently but firmly make me a better gardener,” Hill said.

“Nancy was adamant that if a plant wasn’t working for you, the proper thing to do was to move on and replace it with something better,” she said.

She was “fussy, independent, eternally suspicious of what management was up to, which I liked about her,” former Observer metro columnist Mark Washburn said. “And, I think it could be said, loved anything with chlorophyll far more than many of us blood-based entities.”

Roots on a Kentucky farm

Brachey’s twin, David Brachey of Bradenton, Florida, told the Observer Tuesday night that her love of gardening sprouted as a girl in her native Louisville, Kentucky, on visits to her grandmother’s rural vegetable and dairy farm.

She was born on Dec. 2, 1943, in Jeffersontown, 15 miles from Louisville. Sister Kate Finley Brachey died at birth in 1942.

As siblings are so inclined, the twins formed separate friend circles at Manatee High School in Bradenton, David Brachey said. He entered the Navy after graduation. His sister earned a journalism degree at the University of Florida.

Their family moved to Florida in 1957. Their father, Ben Brachey, retired after 17 years as a Naval ordnance expert and wanted to be near a friend who owned a Gulf station in Bradenton, David Brachey said.

Nancy Brachey knew early on that she wanted to be a journalist, said friend and fellow church member Catherine Bracey. In 1960 at Manatee High, Brachey was chosen to attend the prestigious High School Journalism Institution at the University of Florida campus, Bracey said.

Her first assignment at the Observer was to cover a Charlotte snowstorm from the perspective of a relocated Floridian, Bracey said.

Because they’d gone their separate ways after graduating high school in 1961, David Brachey said he never realized his sister’s full influence on readers until the social media outpouring this week by friends, former colleagues and fans.

“I’m astounded by her career,” he said as he made arrangements for his sister’s viewing in Kentucky on Friday and her memorial service and burial on Saturday.

Brachey also studied horticulture at North Carolina State University and loved to travel. She crisscrossed Europe, her brother said, and especially loved trips to Great Britain.

“Did you get Nancy’s near obsession with British royal family” into the story? asked Brachey’s longtime friend and Observer colleague Rebecca “Becky” Kuhn.

“She was a first-class Anglophile,” former longtime Observer religion writer Tim Funk said.

She was the “go-to person in the newsroom” for questions about plants and flowers but also about England and the royal family, Funk said.

Brachey’s Twitter handle reads: “Retired newspaper reporter. Admirer of all (well, most) things English, Welsh, and Irish. Very interested in rural/farm life, gardens and cats.”

Funk also sought her out when writing about Presbyterians, and Covenant Presbyterian, “her cherished spiritual home in Charlotte.”

Brachey was an elder and elder friend who worked with youth in her younger years, said Bracey, the fellow church member. She was a high school Sunday school teacher.

“Until her recent health decline, she was always involved with the Advent ‘hanging of the greens,’” Bracey said. “The Covenant boxwoods were never trimmed without Nancy’s keen supervision.”

Charlotte Observer readers craved her latest “gardening world advice,” Funk said.

Helen Schwab, who also edited Brachey at the Observer, said Brachey “could talk tough about the garden.”

“‘Any plant you don’t want is a WEED!’ she’d crow,” Schwab said.

“She was kind. She wanted people to do well. She wanted their gardens and their souls to flourish. She refused to be cool, or skeptical, or jaded — all the things we young ones had been trying so hard to be.”

Schwab joined the Observer in 1980.

“I learned a lot about being your own person, no matter who’s around, from Nancy,” she said.

Funk said Brachey “has gone on to her heavenly reward. But thankfully, Charlotte will always have Nancy’s writing — on yellowed clippings squirreled away by her fans and in archived stories still to be discovered online by new generations of green-thumb Charlotteans.”

Brooks Funeral Home in Munfordville, Kentucky, is handling arrangements.

Viewing is scheduled for 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Central time on Friday and 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday. Funeral will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at the funeral home, with burial in the family plot in Camp Ground United Methodist Church Cemetery, 2531 Priceville Road, Bonnieville, Kentucky.

Memorial gifts may be made in her memory to Covenant Presbyterian Church, 1000 E. Morehead Street, Charlotte, NC 28204 and the National Kidney Foundation, PO Box 7413 Six Forks Rd., No. 255, Raleigh, NC 27615. Condolences may be made at www.brooksfuneralhomeky.com.