Plant propagator grows into job

By Rebecca Burcher Jones

Correspondent

Vickie Pepper always has to be thinking and planning ahead.

A good example of that occurred last month, when Pepper, as Norfolk Botanical Garden's plant propagator, launched a major undertaking - production of some 20,000 pansies and violas for use next winter at the garden.

"Our displays all begin someplace, and basically, they start with Vickie," says Brian O'Neil, the garden's director of horticulture. "It all begins in the greenhouse."

Of course, that's not to say every plant at the expansive garden comes out of the facility's 40- by-80-foot greenhouse, but certainly vast numbers of them do. O'Neil puts the number of plants produced in the greenhouse this spring at between 8,000 and 10,000.

"It's my hope that more and more of our plants will be done in-house," O'Neil says.

After a national search, Pepper emerged from among 10 applicants as top choice to be the garden's new plant propagator.

Pepper, of Virginia Beach, took the reins of the greenhouse in May, just two days after graduating with honors from Tidewater Community College. She earned an associate of applied science degree in greenhouse production and nursery center management.

Although the credentials are newly acquired, Pepper isn't new to horticulture or greenhouses. Eleven years ago, she trained as a Master Gardener volunteer in Norfolk through Virginia Cooperative Extension's program with Virginia Tech. That led first to volunteering at the garden and later working part-time in the education department.

A five-year stint followed at Tanner's Creek Garden Center in Norfolk, where she worked in the greenhouse and supervised a propagation crew. More recently, she worked part-time in horticulture at Virginia Zoo while studying at TCC.

With on-the-job training, one might think the degree was superfluous. Not so, says the 45-year-old Pepper. Without it, she was having trouble getting hired for greenhouse management jobs she knew she could handle. "I knew the specialty, but I didn't have the degree."

Her classes included ones dealing with principles of horticulture, chemicals and pesticides, crop production, propagation, soils, pest management, and plant identification. In short, she spent two years studying formally things she knew from practical experience.

In addition to producing plants to be used in the garden, Pepper is responsible for propagating and growing all the plants sold at the garden's public sales. Five volunteers assist her.

She tends and stores rare and unusual seeds acquired through an international exchange program with other botanical gardens and arboreta. In addition, she cares year-round for a host of stock plants used to propagate many of the garden's summer annuals.

"Our greenhouse operation is a very big thing," says O'Neil.

Tracy Brieger, a TCC instructor who taught Pepper, says, "I just think it's really neat that the hometown girl got the job."

Rebecca Burcher Jones, vpgarden@cox.net