About Chris Pax
I am absolutely nuts about gardening with native plants.
My very first job--and I mean very first, while I was still in high school-- was propagating plants in a greenhouse in Montgomery County, MD. I loved it. But I didn’t immediately realize that my career was to be with plants. In fact, I went on to get a degree in cognitive linguistics and worked in education, design, and human factors for a few decades first.
This turns out to have been a good background for a future garden designer. Because gardens are interactive. They are for people to enjoy and use. Human factors is all about learning from people’s actual experience, partly by interviewing them but also by watching what actually happens when they try to use a product or service. The cleverest, most beautiful, most brilliant-looking design can be a frustration to people if the designer overlooks, or won’t correct, a critical feature.
I returned to a career with plants when training as a docent at Adkins Arboretum, on Maryland's Eastern Shore. I had long been a gardener, and even a Frederick County Master Gardener, but as I traveled to a deeper level of aesthetic and learned about the reasons behind Adkins’ emphasis on native plants, I discovered the world of sustainable landscaping. This was something that in addition to bringing beauty to the world, could make a difference for the environment. I was pretty hooked from that point on.
I took every horticulture and landscaping class I could find, and read every resource available. My library of native plant landscaping books has come to fill three tall bookcases. There were other learning opportunities as well...
- teaching classes, giving tours, and organizing presentations about native plants and sustainable landscaping.
- working for several years as Native Plant Specialist at ThorpeWood when it was an Environmental Center.
- serving on the Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council’s steering committee.
- perhaps most importantly, designing gardens for friends-- their happiness with these gardens was heartwarming.
In my spare time, I am working toward a Master's Degree in Sustainable Landscape Design, at George Washington University.