For Women's History Month, a look at some trailblazers in American horticulture

Women have long been at the forefront of gardening in America, whether passing on knowledge to the next generation or creating garden clubs or — in some cases — making significant contributions to science and landscape design. Some gained notoriety for their work. Many are not as well known. Examples include Jane Colden, who is credited with naming and cataloging hundreds of native plants in the 1750s in the Hudson River Valley. There's civil rights and agricultural activist Fanny Lou Hamer, whose cooperative in Mississippi gave poor Black farmers the tools to grow their own food and raise their own livestock. Or first lady Lady Bird Johnson, whose promotion of plantings along the nations' highways were a precursor to today's native-plant movement.