After moving to Oregon in 1999, Stoops became familiar with the Oregon Garden in Silverton and started working as a member of the horticulture staff.  Stoops opted to focus her work on the Garden's wetlands, a choice inspired by an interest in how plants contribute to the overall health of the environment.

"I'm all about the ecological picture," Stoops says.  

She still spends part of her working days at the Garden, but Stoops now serves as the coordinator of the Sustainable Plant Research and Outreach (SPRout). Created in 2003, and now part of Chemeketa Community College's Department of Natural Resources, SPRout's mission is to develop and promote the strategic use of plants to provide ecosystem services and solve environment challenges in managed landscapes.

Headquartered at the Oregon Garden, one of SPRout's projects involves managing the functional and ecological aspects of the Garden's wetlands, which are constructed wastewater wetlands, and provide a great outdoor laboratory and a prime example of the contributions plants make to the environment.

According to Stoops, the Garden's wetlands are unique in the way they are integrated into a public setting and the way they reconnect with the local watershed.

"It's a very dynamic system," Stoops says. "You never know what it is going to do next."

Aside from the wetlands at the Garden, SPRout has projects and partners all over the state and beyond. SPRout projects focus on the use of plants to provide or augment ecosystem services and serve to extract contaminants in soil and groundwater, restoration of degraded riparian areas, wetlands treatment of wastewater, urban storm water management, and others.

"There are a lot of ways that nature can heal itself as long as you don't completely overload it or take it away," Stoops says.

It is clear to Stoops that plants protect the planet, not to mention the aesthetic appreciation, health, happiness, and connection that can come from time spent working with the earth.

"You get so many benefits every time you use plants for a specific reason," Stoops says, "and they are a renewable resource."