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“I love to make things look good and be pretty. The world is stressful enough, why not have something that helps you relax?” Plante said.
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Coming to Riverscape only after a year of it opening, Plante has watched the trees casting a cool shade along the reflecting pools grow from small saplings to the sturdy honey locust trees they are today.
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“When I first got into this, there wasn’t a lot of variety, but now, the growers are going crazy with hybridizing stuff,” Plante said. “You just don’t have enough places to try out all this stuff, that’s the problem.”
With so many varieties to choose from, Plante said she is very particular when picking which greenery gets to spread its roots in a Dayton metroPark.
"When I look at a plant, I want it to be at least interesting two or three seasons out of the year ... so that (it) would give you flowers in the summer, a nice fall color in the fall and then some plants have interesting bark so it looks good in the winter. Something different to look at," Plante said.
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The attention to detail, passion and enthusiasm that Plante and her small staff put into making Dayton’s MetroParks so exquisite doesn’t go unnoticed.
“I tell staff when I’m interviewing them to be hired, the best part about this job is that you will find that every day, somebody will tell you, ‘thank you for doing the job you’re doing’— you don’t get that in a lot of jobs,” Plante said.
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