Kellie Cox

Botanical Muralist and Artist; Landscape Designer, Ginkgo Gardens, Washington, D.C.

Kellie Cox became fascinated with plants and art at a young age. A native of Delaware, Kellie spent much of her childhood playing in gardens and drawing flowers. She learned more about flowers and art through her family’s floral design business. While pursuing her bachelor’s degree at the University of Delaware in Landscape Horticulture and Plant Science, Kellie worked at UDBG as a summer intern in 2008. It was during this summer the interns helped establish the popular Landscape Color Trials and All America Selections Display Garden located along Roger Martin Lane. In her final year at UD, Kellie and a classmate designed the Wetlands Garden as an independent project supervised by former UD Landscape Design professor Chad Nelson. Shortly after graduation, Kellie worked as a nursery manager for a green roof plant nursery and as a residential landscape designer where she focused on native and edible landscapes. She also developed the Advanced Botanical Illustration Online Course at Cornell University which lead to the creation of Botanical Illustration certification courses.

Eventually, Kellie moved to Washington, D.C. to accept a position with the Heurich House Museum as Lead Gardener where she helped re-design their oasis garden into an education garden. In 2015, she accepted a position as the Director of Buildings, Gardens and Grounds at Tudor Place Historic House & Garden. She maintained the 5.5-acre historic gardens and buildings, oversaw greenhouse production and garden restoration projects, and managed the plant collections database. While there, she created a new program called Art in the Garden and designed over sixteen different seed packs for the urban estate’s historic heirloom perennial seeds. In 2018, Kellie became the Supervisory Horticulturist at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., where she oversaw the elegant yet informal Sculpture Garden on the National Mall. She has recently moved on to a new challenge to become a Landscape Designer for Ginkgo Gardens. In her new position, Kellie will create beautifully designed gardens for D.C. residents, while also having a little more time to concentrate on her art career.

Kellie has kept up with her “nights and weekends career” as she refers to her art from smaller art pieces in gallery shows to bold, colorful murals on moving vans and parking garages. She has installed over a dozen murals in Ithaca, New York to Washington, D.C. To find out more about Kellie’s artwork or to sign up for her newsletter visit www.kelliecox.com. Be sure to check out her newest work, Native Floral of Eastern North America: Coloring Book, an educational and fun collection of 18 different native plants to color and explore!