In April 2008, I entered the full-time Longwood Garden Professional Gardener/Horticulturist Program with a passion for using horticulture to improve urban environments. While I grew up on a 350 acre farm in central Pennsylvania, I had spent several years in Philadelphia, working as a marketing and writing professional. My degrees in Communications, Comparative World Literature, and Marketing Management just weren’t scratching my itch to get outside and really get dirty during my workday. As such, I decided to make a fairly drastic career change, which brought me here to Longwood. This blog explores in words and photos what I am experiencing and learning as a “PG” in this diploma program and how my horticulture interests deepen and change as I grow in a dynamic public garden setting.
My cumulative horticulture experience includes life growing up on the farm, working as an estate gardener in high school, a month of volunteering in the Grand Canyon with the vegetation preservation crew, and, most recently, a year of extensive work with an urban farm inside Philadelphia city limits. Through my two years as a horticulture student at Longwood, I have augmented my existing hands-on experiences in sustainability and urban greening projects with applicable garden science and design.
I am also honing my photography skills in the garden to add to my portfolio for freelance photography work. Nearly all the photos on this site (99.8%) are taken by me. I use a Canon Rebel XTi DSLR with a Sigma 50 mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro lens for most of my shots. I had been using a Tamron 17-35 mm WA lens for the 2008 summer but recently traded it in for a Canon 18-55mm IS to avoid distortion at the edges of my wider garden shots.
Please contact me at jlove (at) longwoodgardens (dot) org with any questions you might have about this site, my services as a writer/photographer, or my experiences in Longwood’s program. To learn more about the program itself, click here.
