Learning to See the Beauty of Nature in Our Gardens
Jesse Elwert Peters is an ecologist, habitat garden designer and garden coach with her business, Jessecology, in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her vision as a garden designer is to create naturally beautiful and low maintenance gardens using mostly NY native plants that co-operate with nature.
Jessecology was developed with the inertia of the installation of Jesse's first garden in 2004. She delighted in the process so much that she began working in other people's gardens immediately, and proceeded to read every book her local library had about gardening that summer and subsequently earn a BA in Horticulture, Botany and Ecology from Skidmore College.
It can easily be said that Jesse has inherited her deep love for plants from family roots. She grew up helping care for her parents vegetable garden in western New York state, as well as spending many holidays at Aunt Cecilia's farm in Starksboro, VT, where perennials were sold at the farm stand. In Brooklyn, Aunt Peggy's rooftop garden goes on the annual garden tour, and this aunt helped develop that first garden in 2004. Another aunt, this one Mary, operates an ecological forestry business in the Berkshires. In her late teens and early 20's, Jesse was often able to participate in forestry projects, re-seeding after logging for erosion control and planting trees.
Around the turn of the century Jesse lived in Yosemite National Park for several years, and before that in Calgary, Alberta for several semesters of school. The wildness of Yosemite and the free-thinking culture of Canada both impacted Jesse in a permanent way.
Follow Jesse on Twitter @jessecology and on Facebook
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