Kevin Stearns/University Photography

Senior Jeannette Compton has combined her love of gardening, art and science.

ITHACA, N.Y. -- When Cornell University senior Jeannette Compton says she has been gardening all her life, she means it -- she began when she was three. In elementary school she grew her own vegetables, flowers and herbs. In high school, she says, she became interested in botanical illustration, and in college, she leaned toward science.

In deciding to pursue a joint degree in landscape architecture and plant sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Compton says she combined her long-lived interests: gardening, art and science.

Landscape architecture attracts her because it marries use, aesthetics and function with history and context, says Compton, who served as president of the Cornell chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects during her junior and senior years. But she also feels that integrating ideas from ecology to landscape architecture adds a richness that is needed in many environments, especially in urban areas where small spaces are required to function on many levels.

"I'm really interested in making environmentalism practical," she says. "There needs to be a jump from environmentalism as a niche cause to it being acknowledged on more levels."

Compton, who completed her B.S. in December and has started a master's program in horticulture, seeks to bridge practical applications with environmental consciousness as she explores the design of rooftop gardens or "green" roofs in her graduate studies. Growing plants on rooftops has been shown to reduce heat absorption in roofs, cooling the building and reducing the high temperatures that "urban heat islands" generate, Compton says.

At Cornell Compton has taught gardening to elementary schoolchildren through the Cornell Tradition Program. The alumni-endowed, student-recognition program, which accepted her as a sophomore, asks students to volunteer 75 hours and work 250 hours a year as well as maintain a GPA of at least 2.3. In exchange, the program replaces a student's loans with grants.

"If I ever donate money to Cornell, it's going to Cornell Tradition," Compton says. "It's a great program."

Working with the Ithaca's Children Garden, Compton taught a plant class at Ithaca's Northeast Elementary School while she was a junior. She worked with the children to plant a perennial flower garden, and in the process she showed them how to grow seedlings and design a garden and how to take into account geographic climate zones and plant heights when choosing the best plants for a garden.

As a junior Compton also spent a semester in New Zealand, which was one of the highlights of her college career, she says. It opened her eyes to other cultures and prompted her to compile a long list of countries she now wants to visit, starting with Cuba and Japan.

For Compton, learning to love Ithaca took time. She grew up in urban New Haven, Conn., home of Yale University. By comparison, she found Ithaca isolated. But over time, she has adapted to the small-town rhythms.

"The fact that I was a townie at home had an influence," she says. "I fell in love with the farmers' market here, the wineries and the Ithaca Commons. And Ithacans are so laid back. It's a nice shift from the Ivy League crowd."

After she completes her master's program, Compton would like to work for a landscape architecture or engineering firm, perhaps on the West Coast. She also is interested in applying for a Fulbright Scholarship to study urban design in Germany.

"I could see myself working on a variety of scales, such as on a site level, but also at the city level with urban planning," she says.