At Work With... Joelle Miller

We have quite a collection in here, in the Tropical Display House: several different varieties of begonias, bananas, gingers, hibiscus - what you would think of the tropics. I pick out the dead leaves, cut things back that need to be cut back, cut back spent flowers.

I have a few things that need to be rearranged, so I sometimes add plants, dig them out, put new ones in. I try to keep the display fresh, so it's not exactly the same thing you saw the last time you came in. Ones that are getting too large or are not doing well, I replace them with something that's more suitable. It gets a little warm in here for some plants. Some of them aren't as happy as they could be. I replace them with other things.

We're getting ready to change out all the annual beds from pansies to warm-season plants. That's huge. I will maintain all those all year long, with help. I have two assistants whom I get two days a week. It is an amazing number of plants that go in - in a very small amount of time. I take pictures of them every year and try to keep track of what plants we used and say, "OK, this did really well. Or, this didn't do well. We don't want to do it again."

We usually go through the year before and decide what we want the next year. We come up with a design, come up with what plants we want to use and then try to find the plants. If we can't find one particular plant, we try to find something that's close enough that it'll work with the design.

The front entrance - I'm trying to do with purples and oranges. It's going to be bright. There's a purple sugarcane we're going to use as a backdrop, a bright-orange New Guinea impatiens, and an iridescent purple, so you can see it when you drive by. We call it a drive-by bed, something you might be able to appreciate driving by at 25 mph.

About 15 years ago, I took a part-time job at a greenhouse, helping a lady make basket gardens. From there, I went to a retail nursery. From there, to a wholesale place and from there to Home Depot. When I moved out here with my husband, who's in the Navy, I took the master gardener course here, which got me into the (Botanical) Garden. I worked in a seasonal position the first year, basically March through October, because we have to have so much extra help in the summer. Then they hired me full time.

Once I got into the world of horticulture, there was no going back. If I had known that it was a career choice in high school, which I did not, I probably would have started much younger. I've always had a green thumb. I've always liked gardening. I've always had my own garden. You get into the world of plants, and it's fascinating. There's never the point where you've learned it all, because there's always something new.

Senior gardener's the next step up here. It's just a matter of, I guess, being here long enough. I just hope I'm getting there. This will be my fifth summer. I've learned so much since I started here - for one thing, to prioritize what needs to be done. The first year I was running around like an idiot because I couldn't figure out what needed to be done first. That's always been hard: prioritizing and keeping myself focused. I think that's key in any business.

- As told to staff writer Carolyn Shapiro