B.S. - Ornamental Horticulture and Landscape Design, 1996 Area of emphasis: Business M.S. - Ornamental Horticulture and Landscape Design, 1998 Area of emphasis: Public Horticulture

"I design, build and maintain "display" gardens -those employing lots of color. I also manage our small trial garden and am responsible for all plant records operations, including labels, accessions/deaccessions and maintaining the online garden map. I help teach the Master Gardeners and other groups by giving talks and participating in various hands-on workshops and tours. I work closely with Master Gardeners and other volunteers for most aspects of my job."

"I truly enjoy the whole process of creating a new garden area: taking an unsightly space in the garden, coming up with a design, acquiring the plants, getting a group of volunteers together for the planting party, getting the new garden assembled and then standing back to look at what's been done. Very often at the beginning of the project, I find myself thinking ' "I may not be able to pull this one off' "because of the scope of the project, time or budget constraints, but in the end it always works out well. Ironically, I got into horticulture partly because I don't consider myself a people person, but watching the volunteers interact and make new friends during the planting parties and seeing how excited they get when they look at the finished project is really a treat."

"Internships/jobs in the UTIA Gardens gave me a realistic idea of what would be involved in working in a public garden. My internship at Selby Gardens while an undergraduate was very helpful when it came to learning about tropical plants."