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My name is Dan Stearns, I'm the program coordinator for the Landscape
Contracting major. And we have
two options within our major. One is called Design
Build and the other one is called Landscape Management.
And there is a slight difference between the two.
In the Design Build
option, our students typically will be involved with
the creation of landscapes starting
with the design and following through with the actual construction.
And with the management it is not so much the
building of the landscapes but the maintenance of that landscape once it's built.
So taking care of it from
the time of completion and on year after year.
Both options
take basic courses in plant science
and identification, basic
horticulture and in business courses.
And the reason that we have
the business courses is because we expect all of our students to be
managing a business of their own or of someone else's
as they get into their careers. And the business courses are very
important: to make sure that at the end of the
week, whatever you're doing is making some money for your employer
or for yourself. So it's a
pretty well-rounded cirriculum.
And as far as our students go,
we find that our students enjoy hands-on
work. A lot of our students come to us because they want to
actually be doing something in the field, they like
working outside, they like working with plants
they like the fact that they
can be involved in improving our
surroundings both invironmentally and
aesthetically. Just making nicer spaces for us to use
and live. When we
talk to students coming into our program,
we recommend that you try to get some
experience if you can. Whether that's with a local
landscaper or even just working at a garden center.
Courses that can help out as you
come into our program would be courses like
Spanish language courses,
any kind of course involved with graphics or art,
courses in
computer-aided design or anything to do with computers.
We use a lot of computer-aided design and photoshop,
lots of different programs in our labs
in producing the work that our students do. So
any kind of technical
or technological courses like that would be
good. Careers for our students are
varied but there's a wide
range of opportunities. We're
very pleased that our industry is strong
and we have basically 100% employment.
And there's a wide variety
of jobs that our students do once they get out.
Many go into the landscape contracting firms
that do the design, do the construction.
And they may work as designers, they may work in sales
or a combination of design and sales where you meet
with the client and then you go out and you
produce a design, you come up with your ideas, your creative
ideas. And then you present that to
the client and get them to agree to
do the work and to pay you for it.
And others are more
involved in the actual construction, the management of crews,
the organization of materials
and labor and other contractors
and putting the puzzle together to get everything built
on time and on budget. And so there's different
skills involved in those and different aptitudes.
But good careers in both. And some of
our students are more involved in the growing of plants
at the nursery or the
selling of plants. Others involved in other
aspects of landscaping like irrigation
and in the management
end of things. It's more of
a people business where you are working
with clients, making sure that they're happy with the work that
your company is doing. Making sure that they are going to remain
customers year after year, finding ways
to improve their sites and
in the process improve your business.
A lot of it, too, is managing people. Working
with a number of crews that
involve a number of people on each crew and getting them out the door
on time in the morning. It's the logistics of the
business. So a lot of different things, a lot of
fun things that our students can do. Some
aren't in that commercial production
part of it at all but they're in things like public
gardens. Longwood Gardens in the Philadelphia area or
the Smithsonian Gardens or the Chicago Zoo.
Just places that are open
to the public and the business of
managing those landscapes involves working with
cliantele which are the visitors. So it's a combination
of being a public face as well as making
sure that the flowers are blooming at the right time and the
weeds are pulled and all those things.
Some students are
really good at that and
the way you find out what you like and what you don't like is with an
internship. You get out and you do your internship or
two internships and when you come back from them
you have a good idea of what you like and what you don't like
and what part of the industry you want to go to. But the good
news is that there's work out there for everybody,
in places where you want to
live. There's landscape companies everywhere.
And they range from local, kind of a
mom and pop type of business
where you have a few people that do everything,
to businesses like Brickman and
Valley Crest that do hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of landscaping every year.
It's just a different feel
but the work is really the same, it's just a different scope.
A different scale of work. So we
encourage our students to get that internship and
figure out were they fit best into the industry. I usually ask
a student why they're interested in landscape contracting when they come in
to talk and explore the major,
and usually, I would say 99% of the time:
"I want to work outdoors." And that's
great because that's where our work is typically.
And it's
more than that, though. It's having a passion
for plants, having a passion for
outdoor spaces.
It's an industry that involves hard work.
It involves work in all kinds of weather and
there are probably easier ways
to make a living but if you have a passion for
the kind of work that
landscape companies do, then there's no better way to make a living.
It's fun, it's
rewarding, it can be very lucrative, and
you know, it's a combination
of plants and people and being outside
and it's just a really great combination
for anyone who's kind of
wired for that.