Careers in Hort
- Landscape Construction and Management
You can operate your own landscaping business or work for a landscape design/build contracting firm. A wide variety of career opportunities are available from landscape planning and design to installation, construction and maintenance. Projects include residential and/or commercial design and management as well as restoration and management of wetlands and other ecosystems.
- Production and Sales
Operating a business or managing an orchard, vegetable farm, greenhouse, flower or plant shop, nursery, landscaping service, garden center, or food processing firm.
- Marketing
Being involved in the wholesale or retail sale of fresh or processed fruits and vegetables, seeds, cut flowers, house plants, floral arrangements, or nursery stock. Being a buyer of these items for a chain store, a government or private institution, or wholesale distributor.
- Research
You can be a scientist. Horticulturists seek ways to improve the yield and quality of fruits, vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants, and to develop methods for handling, storing and, marketing them. You may choose to specialize in plant breeding, plant nutrition, plant growth regulation, plant physiology, or biotechnology.
- Pest Management
You can be trained to work with state or federal regulatory agencies, agricultural and chemical suppliers, growers, processing corporations, and agricultural educators. You can specialize in integrated pest management or organic agriculture.
- Education
You can be a teacher. The United States needs qualified teachers of horticulture in high schools, technical schools and universities. County extension educators and extension specialists often teach horticulture via workshops and conferences. Horticulture touches the lives of every person, and providing educational experiences in horticulture to persons of all ages can be very rewarding.
- Industries Serving Growers of Horticultural Crops
Canning and freezing companies, seed firms and manufacturers of fertilizers, pesticides, and production equipment offer personnel with horticultural training a wide variety of career opportunities in research, development, technical service, and sales work.
- Communications
Writing for farm and garden magazines, newspaper, television and radio can offer rewarding careers for horticulturists.
- Public Gardens and Arboretums
Public gardens and arboreta offer a wide range of career opportunities in management and production in greenhouses and conservatories, landscaping, education, conservation, ecology, and integrated pest management.
- Zoo Horticulture
You can design and maintain natural habitats for zoo animals and create aesthetically pleasing landscaping in zoo environments.
