Jeanette Marantos, L.A. Times plants reporter, dies at 70

Jeanette Marantos, a stalwart Features reporter for the Los Angeles Times, died Saturday following an emergency heart issue. She was 70.

Marantos was key to the success of The Times’ plants coverage, making waterwise native plants a cornerstone of her reporting as drought and climate change worsened in California. She spotlighted people turning their yards into native plant oases and beautifying public spaces. She also wrote about people saving native flora and fauna, from mountain lions in need of a freeway crossing to endangered butterflies and tiny native bees. Her last assignment Friday was covering the California Native Plant Society’s conference in Riverside.

“She was the most loving person I ever met, probably to a fault in some cases. If she knew you and you were a part of her life, she was fiercely loyal always,” said her son, Sascha Smith.

His brother, Dimitri Smith, echoed his sentiment, recalling when he was in school that his mother would offer rides home to other students when they didn’t have one. “Above all else, she was genuinely the most caring person I’ve ever met in my life,” Dimitri Smith said.

Marantos, who was born on March 13, 1955, grew up in Riverside and remembered her parents doting on their 3,000-square-foot lawn. As California’s water crisis worsened, recalling the constant swish of sprinklers throughout her childhood piqued her interest in native plants.

“That was the California landscape of my youth. In retrospect, it feels like a pipe dream, given the reality of this region’s limited water and propensity for drought … a lovely memory that is no longer sustainable today,” she wrote.

Marantos also covered the effects of last year’s L.A. County wildfires on soil and gardens, the fate of Altadena’s Christmas Tree Lane after the Eaton fire, the construction of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, a project that kicked off with a hyperlocal nursery, how L.A. gardeners were reacting to immigration raids, and the rise of human composting. Known formally as natural organic reduction, Marantos’ remains will undergo this process to become soil, her sons said.

In her role at work, she wrote the beloved L.A. Times Plants newsletter, her latest focusing on the resiliency of plants in burn areas. She also launched the popular L.A. Times Plants booth at the paper’s Festival of Books, working with the Theodore Payne Foundation, a nonprofit education center and nursery focused on native plants, and the California Native Plant Society to educate visitors about native plants. She drove the initiative to give away sunflower seed packets at last year’s booth because the sturdy plants are known to extract lead, an idea that came to her as she tested contaminated soil in burn zones.

She “was a one-of-a-kind voice for plants and the people who care about them. Through her writing, she imbued others with her infectious enthusiasm for the natural world — a gift to all of us that will continue to resonate,” according to a statement from the Theodore Payne Foundation. “Her visits to the nursery, her thoughtful conversations, and her wholehearted engagement brought laughter and insight into every interaction.”

Marantos was a dedicated reporter — she’d drive 60 miles to get an answer when no one was picking up the phone — but also devoted to her family. She cared for her husband, Steven B. Smith, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011 and died in 2021, providing readers with tips from their experiences. She spoke often of her sons and grandchildren and her dogs. She opened her December Plants newsletter, about a mother-son duo’s seed bomb project, by sharing that she had recently welcomed another “perfect” granddaughter.

“Plus I got to listen to my other perfect granddaughter read her first book and help her plant her first sunflower,” she wrote.

Sascha Smith recalled one of the last things Marantos said before going into emergency surgery Friday was sorry to his daughter Naomi, 6, for missing her birthday Sunday.

Gardens full of buckwheat, sage, vegetables, roses and treasured sweet peas surround her Ventura home. Her father, an Air Force veteran and son of Greek immigrants, introduced her to “the miracle of seeds” and to the delicious perfume of sweet peas. She remembered trailing behind her grandmother cutting roses in her garden, lugging bucketfuls of flowers and inhaling the sweetness. She added native plants to her garden because yes, they helped save water, butterflies and bees, but also because she loved their fragrance.

“These lean, scrappy plants are rarely as showy as their ornamental cousins, but when it comes to fragrance, they win every award, hands down,” she wrote.

It wasn’t just aesthetics and aroma that inspired Marantos to garden. It was the acts of digging, weeding, watching something grow and sharing the abundance with others. “On my worst days, my garden was a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and the one thing that made me smile,” she wrote.

Jeanette Marantos appears on “Los Angeles Times Today” in June 2024 with host Lisa McRee.

(L.A. Times Today)

Marantos tended to her garden like she tended to her friends. She often brought her friends along on reporting trips, from hiking up Los Angeles’ steepest staircases and visiting wildflower viewing areas to convincing one who flew in to Los Angeles from Washington state to spend a weekend volunteering at The Times’ Plants booth at the Festival of Books.

Marantos lived in central Washington for more than 20 years, working as a reporter at the Wenatchee World Newspaper and as a teacher at Wenatchee High School. She also worked for a program focused on getting at-risk middle school youth into college. “So many students … the trajectory of their lives is very different because she believed in them,” Dimitri Smith said.

Working as a community volunteer, she was also integral in developing a sculpture garden in downtown Wenatchee, Dimitri Smith said. “Growing up, I didn’t know how special that was. I didn’t know how unique that was. She wanted to be engaged in the community and make a difference always,” he said.

Marantos wrote personal finance stories for The Times from 1999 to 2002. She moved from Washington back to Southern California in her 50s to restart her journalism career, at one point interning with KPCC, now known as LAist, Dimitri Smith said. In 2015, she returned to The Times to write for the Homicide Report. A year later she started contributing to the Saturday section’s gardening coverage, which she would work on full time in 2020 when it relaunched as L.A. Times Plants. She described the two disparate beats as a way of staying balanced, her yin and yang.

Jeanette Marantos, shown around 1975, tries to grow her first garden.

(Steven B. Smith)

“Going from homicide to gardening might seem unusual, or maybe even a step away from the action. But not for Jeanette. First off, she personally loved gardening. … So the assignment was kinda like telling a kid to cover the candy beat,” said Rene Lynch, a former Times editor who hired Marantos on the plants beat. “But also, Jeanette was a true journalist, which means she had an innate curiosity about everything.”

Learning to garden took dedication. Marantos described her first attempt in her 20s as disastrous; her tomato plants grew more leaves than fruit, her sunflowers were sad, not hearty. She thought of her explainers on various plant topics as her ongoing education.

“Our family is completely grief-stricken and shocked over her loss. We’re going to have a very, very difficult time living without her,” said her brother, Tom Marantos.

She is survived by her son Sascha Smith and his daughter Naomi Smith; son Dimitri Smith, his wife Molly Smith and their daughter Charlie Smith; her brother Tom Marantos and his partner Rafael Lopez; her sisters Lisa and Alexis Marantos; and her best friends, who were like family, Leslie Marshall and Theresa Samuelsen.

Marantos’ family asks that donations in her honor be made to the Theodore Payne Foundation and Beauty of Bronze, a program she founded in Wenatchee that introduces elementary students to sculpting. Donations to Theodore Payne can be made online or via check payable to the Theodore Payne Foundation at 10459 Tuxford St., Sun Valley, CA 91352. Donations to Beauty of Bronze can be made online or by check payable to Community Foundation of North Central Washington, Beauty of Bronze at 9 South Wenatchee Ave., Wenatchee, WA 98801.