I was not ready for the news that came a few months ago of Janet Draper’s retirement. For 27 years Janet has been the magical conductor of the Smithsonian’s Mary Livingston Ripley Garden. The idea that she might retire one day never crossed my mind. I had always hoped Michael Jordan, the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) in the National Basketball Association, would hit game winners until the end of time. And Janet would go on forever creating enchantment and a sense of place at the Ripley—smiling, greeting tourists like long lost friends— while shaping a complex garden with energy and horticultural knowhow.

[This is an updated Garden Rant story from 2015.]

The Oracle of Delphi, Indiana.

Janet was occasionally Delphi High School’s mascot. She would parade around school basketball games in a paper mâché headdress, masquerading as the Delphi Oracle, inciting the crowd to cheer: D-E-L-P-H-I Delphi! Delphi! Delphi!

Good fortune was foretold.

Forever a farm girl, Janet always wanted to work with plants. After graduating from Delphi High School, Janet got a horticulture “pedigree” from Purdue, and then the real learning commenced. One stop along the growing curve led to another. Purdue’s Horticulture Professor, Dr. Harrison Flint, suggested Delaware’s Mt. Cuba Center, where she interned with Dick Lighty, the Center’s first Director for their Native Plants of the Piedmont. Lighty was impressed by Janet’s work and spirit, so he recommended her to nurseryman Kurt Bluemel.

A remarkable collection of talent was assembled at Kurt Bluemel’s nursery in 1987.

Ed Snodgrass of Emory Knoll Farms, Georg Uebelhart of Jelitto Perennial Seeds, and Cassian Schmidt, an international garden designer, were cutting their teeth alongside Janet. Bluemel knew how to recognize talent.

At Bluemel’s urging, Janet, whose enthusiasm for life rivals her passion for plants, went to work for Countess Helene von Stein-Zeppelin’s jewel-box nursery in Laufen, Germany. And then she went to work, as an intern, at Beth Chatto’s legendary garden and nursery in Colchester, Essex England. Fergus Garrett, now the Chief Executive and Head Gardener at Great Dixter, was a fellow nursery intern.

Snodgrass, a friend of Janet’s since their days at Bluemel’s, admired her winding professional path. “The slowest way is the fastest,” he likes to say.

Janet was paying her dues slogging through muck, sticking cuttings and pricking out seedlings—learning, constantly learning. The work suited her.

Janet 2008

In 1997 she landed at the Smithsonian’s Ripley Garden, a tiny .33-acre sliver along the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Since then, she has been a thoughtful and innovative caretaker. Janet has accomplished something special with her broad knowledge of plants, her artist’s sensibility, and her fearlessness in experimentation. I’d never visited before she started work there, but Janet has made the Ripley Garden my nation’s capital oasis. I have visited often. Janet’s arrival coincided nicely with our visits to D.C. to see Aunt Rose.

“This has Schizalobium (lovely filtered light), Crinum ‘Queen Emma’, a Mystic hybrid Dahlia (hardy in DC multiple years), Orthosiphon staminoides (cats whiskers), and a bunch of tradescantias, Halogoris, Alternanthera and whatever else wanted to be there!”

” My husband, Adam, dubbed me: Girl with a Shovel. I love it!”

Aunt Rose’s favorite spot. “Paeonia (Itoh) ‘Bartzella’, Allium christophii,
Lysimachia nummularia aurea, Spirea thnbergii ‘Ogon’, and some weeds!”

Rhodophialia bifida

Lycoris sprengeri

A career began to blossom further

Even more impressively, Janet possesses an educator’s willingness to share what she knows. Through her writing, lectures, and even meeting visitors on the spot, in the Ripley Garden, she gave gardeners the confidence that they too could have beautiful gardens. Janet Draper, the Oracle of Delphi, Indiana, was destined to become an ambassador for gardening.

A talent with the experience of someone like Janet Draper doesn’t come along every day. The Perennial Plant Association (PPA) was another lucky beneficiary. Janet stepped in as President of the PPA board in 2015 during a transition when membership was declining, not only in the PPA, but also with numerous other plant societies around North America. Janet wondered if the pull of the internet was slowly killing in-person annual meetings.

The PPA had been the green world’s best circus symposium for 33 years.

Janet became the ringleader.

Shannon Currey, Education and Outreach Director at Izel Native Plants, said, “Janet has an extraordinary legacy with PPA. She’s always connected people and brought many of us into the fold. Janet always focused on the good being done and poured everything she had into sustaining the organization.”

“Oh goodness, this was the Philly PPA in 2008 when we were at North Creek Nurseries. A GREAT party. Elvis showed up! Elvis (Neil Diboll, from the Prairie Nursery in Westfield, WI) did not have a place to stay so I can honestly say that Elvis asked if he could stay with me. He stayed in the other bed.” )

Step right this way… Gardeners of all stripes are welcome— nursery folks, designers, landscape architects, bloggers, and teachers at the greatest gathering of perennial plant enthusiasts on earth.

Janet at 2023 PPA with Chanticleer’s Dan Benarcik  (L) and Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Andrew Bunting (R). “I’m so proud of them.”

Janet’s impact on the Perennial Plant Association cannot be overstated, “Emily Bibens Chung, Executive Director PPA said. “Her impact is not just in her many years of service (impressive though it is) but in how she served. Janet is a connector. A connector of people, of ideas, and especially of perennial plant people. She knows almost everyone and has an uncanny ability to know who should really be introduced to whom, and then to make those connections happen… She’s been a mentor to me and I’m forever grateful for the many, many, many hours she spent talking with me and helping me though out my career.”

Janet checks in her federal hand pruners on Friday

Two weeks ago, friends and colleagues showed up at the Smithsonian to give tribute to Janet. She was touched. “People just kept showing up and kept coming. They came from Philadelphia and Annapolis. I am still processing the affection. It is such a bittersweet moment.”

“Pretty much all tropicals that overwinter at our greenhouses then I plant them out.
Musanga cecropioides—a tree from Africa
Schizalobium parahyba— Brazilian tree
(Both of these were gifts from Chanticleer’s Dan Benarcik brought back as wee seedlings— now 20’ tall!
Colocasia ‘Waikiki’ from
Plant Delights breeding w Dr Cho
Bromeliads, coleus, and whatever else I can get my hands on!”

“.Nancy Bechtol hired me. She started as Director of Horticulture Services Division (yes, we were the outside janitorial crew) and she rose to become the Director of Facilities overseeing all Smithsonian  buildings world wide.”

“I’ve got the bubble machine blasting out as much happiness as possible this week.”

In the meantime, Janet and her husband, Adam, will take time off to relax. I’m not sure Janet has ever slowed down. I talked to her recently, and she sounded serene, in a good place. A trip to Japan is imminent. Maybe New Zealand, also.

“I want to savor my free time,” she said.

We haven’t heard the last from the Perennial Oracle of Delphi.