Environmental Horticulture

The flexible curriculum of this major allows you to focus on either:

• Horticulture: Crops like flowers, woody landscape plants, fruits and vegetables, including famous Idaho potatoes
• Urban landscapes: Sustainable private and commercial landscapes, golf courses and sports turf

• Managing a championship golf course
• Taking charge of a botanical garden
• Running your own vegetable farm
• Overseeing sales, inventory and marketing for a major greenhouse or nursery

Study plant propagation, crop production, pollination, post-harvest handling, landscape and turf management, and pest control. Learn to multiply plants using techniques from simple stem cuttings to sterile tissue culture. Take field trips to nurseries, golf courses and top-of-the line landscape installations. Build a water garden or patio. You’ll get more hands-on opportunities at our on-campus plant science farms and computer-controlled greenhouses.

You’ll learn from teachers whose research interests span horticulture’s most interesting topics.

Most of our students complete an internship the summer between their junior and senior year. They help grow plants and collect data in greenhouses, nurseries and laboratories.

Prepare for Success

This major is a good fit if you can see yourself:

• Using innovative practices to increase yields and protect plants from pests.
• Responding to environmental and consumer trends.
• Drawing on information from microbiology, entomology, engineering, business and other fields.

To prepare, you may want to:

• Take biology and science.
• Practice your leadership skills in clubs, student office, or 4-H activities.
• Plant a garden, visit greenhouses or work on a farm.

Your First Year

Your first year, you will learn communication skills with course work in writing and public speaking. You will also take science of plants and principles of horticulture.

More advanced major courses include genetics, soil ecosystems and plant pathology.

See the four-year plan.

What You Can Do

With this degree, you may become one of the following:

• Landscape director: Monitor, maintain, and improve golf courses or the grounds of cities, universities or hospitals.
• Propagator: Produce new plants through grafting, budding, cutting, tissue culture and genetic manipulation.
• Landscape contractor: Design and install complete landscapes.
• Greenhouse manager: Test, analyze, and modify growing conditions to improve production and cut energy costs.
• Arborist and urban forester: Establish and maintain trees and shrubs for a large park, city or state agency.
• Grower: Oversee day-to-day production of vegetables, fruits, or landscape plants; supervise employees in pest management, irrigation, equipment maintenance and other activities.
• Field representative: Work for a company that sells machinery, fertilizers, and pest management supplies to golf courses, greenhouses and nurseries. Recommend products and explain their use.
• Researcher: Develop more economical and effective techniques for growing, handling and marketing horticultural crops.

Opportunities

Our graduates get jobs at greenhouses, nurseries, parks, athletic facilities, universities and government agencies.

You may also want to continue your education. Earn an advanced degree in plant science, environmental science, turf management, landscape design, agronomy, plant breeding and genetics or plant pathology.

Current Research

Assist in a faculty research project or do your own independent study. Develop potting mixes containing cattle biosolids. Work out genetic engineering techniques for flowering plants. Test mustard seed meal’s ability to control weeds in horticultural crops. Paid positions are available.

Our faculty members are researching topics including:

• Testing native plants for low-input landscapes
• Domesticating the wild mountain huckleberry
• Measuring the water savings of drip irrigation
• Evaluating specialty potato varieties

Activities

Plant and Soil Science Club: Grow plants for sale; take field trips.
International Society of Arboriculture: Join the student chapter for tree-related activities.
Soil Stewards: Work at the on-campus organic farm.

Hands-On Experience

Intern. Get practical experiences like these:

• Monrovia: Take part in propagation, shipping, research, sales and other aspects of a large wholesale nursery.
• Golf course: Manage turf on fairways and greens.
• University of Idaho Potato Tissue Culture Laboratory: Produce disease-free plantlets and minitubers for certified seed potato production.

• Taiwan: Study orchid and tropical fruit production.
• Mexico: Tour greenhouses that supply 80 percent of cherry tomatoes sold in the U.S.
• India: Observe 1,000-year-old farming practices on terraced hillsides.

Facilities

The department’s facilities include two plant science farms and two state-of-the-art greenhouses.