Artistic Expression through Horticulture

You would expect that someone working at the U.S. Botanic Garden would need to know a lot about plants, and to be good at caring for them. But it turns out those are only the beginning of the skills needed.

 

As is the case at most jobs, subject matter knowledge is the starting point, but what you do with that knowledge to make an impact incorporates many other skill sets and talents. One of the things Nate Braddock ’22 appreciates most about his time at Washington College is the way its liberal arts approach prepared him for his work with carnivorous plants, corpse flowers, and Hawaiian plants at the garden. 

“In my current role as a collections horticulturist at the U.S. Botanic Garden, I wear many hats: living collections manager, display horticulturist, researcher, and educator,” Braddock said. “The confidence and skills I gained in my biology and studio art classes have carried me through my early career.” 

The biology major and art and art history minors on Braddock’s transcript show the way Washington enables students to combine different interests officially through its curriculum for a unique preparation that matches their specific goals. But the Silver Spring native’s coursework at the College was even more directly applicable to his current job than you might think possible. 

A course co-taught by studio art professor Heather Harvey and chemistry professor Anne Marteel-Parrish called "Greener Art through Greener Chemistry: Art in the Anthropocene" showed Braddock he could explore his love of the natural world through making art, and further classes with Harvey helped him build the skills and confidence to create bolder, bigger pieces.  

The experience of creating art in conversation with nature came in useful early in his job at the U.S. Botanic Garden when he was given an unused planting bed to create a public display of tropical pitcher plants. Using PVC pipes, pool noodles, cork bark, and expanding foam sealant, he built a naturalistic scaffold for the plants, which now look like they are growing on a tree. 

The public display is part of Braddock’s work developing programming and educational efforts for people to engage with the plant collection. But he also works on the plants themselves, not only caring for them, but researching the best ways to propagate them for conservation. That aspect of the job draws on Braddock’s more traditional science lessons at Washington.  

In addition to his senior capstone experience, a thesis titled “Zombie Ants! Fungal Parasitism and Mechanisms of Behavior Manipulation,” Braddock also participated in research through the John S. Toll Research Fellows Program. He and two other students collaborated with biology department chair Jennie Rinehimer on a study of nesting success in field sparrows. He also credits one of Rinehimer’s classes with helping him learn how to effectively communicate scientific topics to the general public. 

“Her mentorship in research methodology and scientific writing helped me jump into a career in conservation directly out of college. Now, when I do public outreach about plant adaptations and the strange world of symbiosis, I get to pass along the stories I first learned from Dr. Connaughton and Dr. Rinehimer, and as I do, I try to channel their contagious enthusiasm that got me hooked in the first place,” Braddock said. On the art side, “Professor Harvey encouraged me to run with crazy ideas I had in class, letting me do large scale public installation work I never could have imagined I would do when I first stepped foot on campus. Her encouragement and constant support of my big ideas instilled so much confidence in me that I still carry with me as I undertake new creative projects.”   

— Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven