Spring is primetime for ABG head gardener

By Joe Earle

Amanda Bennett wanted a job that let her work outdoors.

Growing up on a cattle farm near Madison, she said, “I was always outside.” When she headed off to college, she decided to pursue a career that wouldn’t keep her at a desk inside an office. “Why would you want to spend your time inside when you could be outside?” she asked.

She’d always liked working with plants, so she tried majoring in botany, the study of plants. It didn’t stick. Botany required too much time in a lab, peering into a microscope. She switched to horticulture, the art and practice of gardening.

“I like to get dirty, I do,” she said one recent sunny afternoon as she sat on a bench in the Atlanta Botanical Garden, where now, at age 44, she’s vice president of the garden for horticulture and collections.

That means you can call Bennett the head gardener for the showiest public gardens in metro Atlanta. She oversees 30 acres of plants and plantings and directs 36 horticulturalists who tend the Midtown attraction. And it means she can work outdoors in one of metro Atlanta’s most spectacular plant places, a carefully crafted, high-profile display at a high-profile institution.

“Plants are cool,” she said one recent sunny afternoon as she sat on a bench overlooking a newly redeveloped area of the garden. So are gardens. “I tell people that above all, gardens should make you happy,” she said. And they are personal. You can try things out and take a shot at growing whatever makes sense to you. “[A garden] doesn’t’ follow rules,” she said. “Plants don’t read books [about what to plant, or where].”

In a public garden, the plants change constantly. Gardens are redesigned regularly and restocked with new plants and new combinations of plants. Returning flower fans want to see new things, after all, and not just repeats of last year’s blooms. Bennett jokes that the planning and execution takes a lot of spreadsheets.

It also takes months. She and her staff start working on plans for their gardens a year or more in advance, she said. They want every space to make visitors in some way say “wow.”

“If everybody could do this,” she said, “you’d never have to leave your backyard.”

Saying she oversees 30 acres doesn’t fully cover the ground she and her staff care for. Each section of the public space is divided into smaller, individual gardens. Some areas are named, but most simply are identified by plot number. Each has its own plan and is attended by its own gardener. “There’s not a garden that doesn’t have something going on all the time,” she said.

So, what’re her favorites? The native azaleas? The towering camellias? Daffodils? Hydrangeas? Tulips? Nope. “I love cactuses and succulents,” she said. “If you look at cactus flowers, they’re extremely sculpted. They’re extremely structural.”

She learned to appreciate desert flowers during her first job at the botanical garden, which she started right out of college. More than two decades later, she’s still finding new treats in the garden. “I learn something every day I didn’t know about plants,” she said.

“And I get to be outside.”