CLEVELAND -- Robin Cannon, horticulturalist at the Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, knows how to prune a Japanese maple so that it appears to be cradling a monument in its branches.

It's her job to work with families to find appropriate plantings for family plots, oversee the planting of thousands of annuals and care for trees that were alive in the days of Moses Cleaveland.

She's a caretaker of Lake View's legacy as a living museum. The 285-acre cemetery -- located at 12316 Euclid Ave., Cleveland -- was founded in 1869 as part of the garden cemetery movement that came to this country from France.

"She has brought a dimension to our horticulture here that we didn't have before," cemetery president Katharine Goss said about Cannon, 37. "It's not that easy to find the scientist with the artistic eye in the same person, and she's got that. We were a little down on our heels with our landscaping. Robin has brought that back to us."

Let's get to know Cannon in this Q&A profile.

Q: How long have you worked at Lake View?

I started here in January 2014. It's been great. It was a serendipity event for me. I wasn't actually looking for a job, but generations of my family are buried here. The owner of the company I worked for previously, Impullitti Landscaping in Burton, is friends with [Goss]. It was like the universe was pulling me in this direction.

I grew up in Chesterland in the country. I always liked being outside. I'm not a person who likes to stay still; I would never do well with an office job because computers don't like me.

I graduated from West Geauga High School in 1995 and got married the following year [she's now divorced]. I was living in Reminderville and I enjoyed working in my lawn. The owner of a Streetsboro golf course asked me to start taking care of the course. I said, "Are you serious? Because I didn't go to school for this, I just like doing it." Later, I worked for a country club and a couple of landscaping companies. This style is more for me rather than public landscaping at people's houses. I like this environment better. I earned a horticulture degree from Kent State University in 2013.

I have two children; Jason is 18 and a high school graduate; Alyssa is 14 and will attend Twinsburg High School next school year. We live in a 114-year-old cabin in Novelty.

Q: Describe the ways in which you're trying to improve the plantings at Lake View.

As the larger canopies expand, we have areas that used to be full sun that are now full shade, so it makes a huge difference in what kind of plant material you put in place there. Once [a shrub] doesn't get enough light, it starts to have to reach too far and it bends over and it doesn't look the way you originally intended anymore. So you remove that and bring something in that likes the shade.

In some of the sections, there were these great viburnums that get these snowball-shaped large flowers; you can smell them from a mile away. But the viburnum had become very leggy and were falling over. So we removed them. We brought in things like new, smaller varieties of Japanese maples.

Q: What are some other challenges?

Where to begin? (laughter). Finding people who want to do physical labor. It's a lot of work. We get all of our annuals planted in two weeks. Thousands of flowers are planted on graves, and around the buildings and some of the monuments. We just re-did the entrance at the Mayfield Road gate; there are two new large beds there. We're getting geraniums, zinna, marigolds, coleus and New Guinea impatiens. This year we're sticking with reds, pinks and whites.

I have four full-time staff during the growing season; we outsource mowing, weed whacking and leaf cleanup. Another crew digs graves.

Q: How do you decide which plants and shrubs will look good with a particular monument?

To show off a tall obelisk, you can bring in plants that echo that shape. You could plant astilbe; they have flowers that come up in a spike. Or you could show off the obelisk by putting round things around it, so the monument really stands out a lot. But I try never to have the plant material put the monument in the background. You need that balance between the two.

Down the road, a tree planted in the cemetery now will eventually be huge and beautiful. You might never see it because it takes awhile, but know that your grandkids are going to come here and they will say, "Grandpa planted this tree for grandma when they bought this lot for us, so we could come here and spend time enjoying it."