JANET DRAPER BIO

Janet Draper has been the sole gardener for Smithsonian’s Mary Livingston Ripley Garden for 26 years.   This tiny 1/3 of an acre garden is located on the National Mall and is open 24 hours a day to visitors from around the globe.  Janet’s roles in the garden include everything from design and maintenance to cleaning the fountain and answering questions from visitors.  Janet’s approach is to try to do something different every year to challenge herself and to keep educating visitors about the amazing diversity of plants! 

Janet was raised in a rural farming community in Indiana and always knew she wanted to do something with plants. She pursued a bachelor’s in horticulture from Purdue University in 1987. Afterwards, she sought addition training with a series of internships that took her further than she could ever have imagined. She worked at Mt. Cuba Center for the Study of Native Piedmont Plants in Greenville, Delaware before it was open to the public; Kurt Bluemel’s nursery in neighboring Maryland where she learned the European approach to running a nursery, the famed perennial nursery of Countess von Stein-Zeppelin in Germany’s Black Forest, and Beth Chatto at her amazing Nursery and Garden in Elmstead Market, England. 

Once back in the States, she continued to gain experience at numerous nurseries from Long Island to Illinois.  After nearly a decade of working in perennial nurseries, she then started putting plants in the ground instead of little black plastic pots as an estate gardener and contractor for Oehme van Sweden where she helped install and maintain their designs.  She also helped co-found the Annapolis Horticulture Society. You can learn more by visiting Smithsonian Gardens, by contacting Janet at her email address drapeja@si.edu, and by following Smithsonian Gardens on Instagram.

THE PLANTASTIC PODCAST

The Plantastic Podcast is a monthly podcast created by Dr. Jared Barnes.  He's been gardening since he was five years old and now is an award-winning professor of horticulture at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX.  To say hi and find the show notes, visit theplantasticpodcast.com.

You can learn more about how Dr. Jared cultivates plants, minds, and life at meristemhorticulture.com.  He also shares thoughts and cutting-edge plant research each week in his newsletter plant•ed, and you can sign up at meristemhorticulture.com/subscribe.  Until next time, #keepgrowing!