Jessica Lyga's daydreams come true, creating a landscape for her future

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

Three years ago Jessica Lyga had a true Wizard of Oz experience as she worked on a landscaping project on a New Woodstock, N.Y., farm. Around her were barns and nipping geese and a wind so strong she felt she would "fly away."

Senior Jessica Lyga gets some flower power in Minns Garden. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

Then it came to her, in a moment of revelation: "This is where the tornado came from," she thought. More than a century earlier, that very farmhouse had been the home of the grandparents of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz. "That hilltop was so windy, it reminded me of Baum's Kansas."

Lyga will graduate this weekend with a bachelor's degree in horticulture. She started landscaping at age 9 in Cazenovia, N.Y., helping in her mother's business. As her mother's "key weeder," she pulled dandelions and shook Japanese beetles from plants.

But she also learned that she loved contemplation. "What I liked about landscaping is that it allowed me to think. It allowed me to wander off and daydream," she said. "Now with the Cornell degree, I can wander off more in depth, think about the plant structure and the ecosystem."

In high school, involved in other issues, Lyga saw there were few places for teens to intermingle in Cazenovia. So with friends, she started a fund-raising and activities organization called Project CAFÉ, now housed in Common Grounds, a coffee shop that gives teens a place to congregate.

After high school Lyga started her own landscaping business in central New York while earning an associate degree in horticulture from the State University of New York at Morrisville. Coming to Cornell in 2000 was not a clear choice for Lyga, who had offers to attend Syracuse University and the University of Hawaii. "For two weeks, I knew I had a hard decision to make. I came pretty close to choosing Hawaii, but I always wanted to come here," she said.

Although there were some setbacks -- discovering there was no kitchen in her apartment and waiting a month for telephone service -- Lyga found she "loved the courses," she said. She flourished in classes in plant pathology, entomology, taxonomy of vascular plants and landscaping management. And last year she won the New York State Nursery and Landscape Association A.M.S. Pridham Award.

In her final semester, she has served as president of the Hortus Forum, the student horticulture group. And as graduation approaches, Lyga is leaving a living legacy: a new brilliance and gleam to Minns Garden, the famed Cornell flower beds in front of the Plant Sciences Building. Assisting horticulture professor Nina Bassuk, Lyga renovated an older garden design, cut away the overgrown plants, labeled flowers and other greenery and boosted the beds. And now the garden is a rainbow of spirea, crocus, colchicum and willow.