Smithsonian Landscape Chief Grateful for Training in College

When Jeff Nagle was a student in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, he used to dream up landscaping plans for local homes and present them to homeowners as projects for a landscape design class. Today, eight years later, he is no longer just dreaming up landscaping plans - he is turning them into reality, and supervising their execution.

Best of all, many visitors to one of the nation's best-known attractions get to enjoy them.

His creative course in landscape design taught him to envision what landscapes should look like, and how to transform his plans from just good ideas to real-world surroundings. But Nagle never dreamed that one day he would get to make all of the major landscaping decisions at a museum as large as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Nagle, 30, of Arlington, Va., is the Smithsonian's supervisory horticulturalist. His job requires that he oversee the upkeep and maintenance of the gardens and plants on Smithsonian museum grounds. He heads a staff of about 10 other horticulturalists, biological science technicians and volunteers.

"They work the grounds that surround the museums, and, together, we discuss the long-term plans for the Smithsonian landscape," Nagle says.

Nagle, who graduated from Penn State in 1998, and staff take care of seven different museum outdoor areas and three main specialty gardens that are considered to be the most frequented outdoor museum spots around the Smithsonian.