Finding the green industry

Michigan State student Emma Brinks feels like she’s already found her reason why she entered the green industry.

“There is something uniquely satisfying about pointing to something and saying, ‘I grew that,’” she told her peers during a student forum at the National Collegiate Landscape Competition.

But while Brinks and the handful of other students have found their “why” in landscaping, the students also said as a whole, the industry is not doing enough to promote itself to their generation. During the 90-minute NCLC session, led by the National Association of Landscape Professionals’ Jenn Myers, the students dissected ways they feel landscapers can better reach them.

LISTEN: Jenn Myers breaks down how NCLC works during COVID-19

“I thought horticulture was just gardening and corn,” said Bre Craig, also a Michigan State student. She was once in nursing but found a once-surprising calling in the green industry. When she told her mother about studying horticulture, she feared her daughter would be slogging through back-breaking labor every day.

“You have to explain to people,” Craig says, “and they just have this predisposed stereotype in their head.”

MORE THAN MOWING. Jennifer Crocker graduated with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and worked in human resources, where she found she often interacted with unhappy people. Unhappy herself, Crocker enrolled in her local college, Cuyamaca College, just to take some general education courses like astronomy. While already enrolled, Crocker finally learned by hearsay what the horticulture industry provides.

“Our program is a hidden treasure,” Crocker said. “(After I joined), I was going to be a plant lady for the rest of my life.”

Myers told the students that at Virginia Tech, her alma mater, only 10% or so of horticulture graduates actually started in horticulture. Instead, they come from other studies – much like Crocker – and discover the job diversity in the green industry.

“This industry is more than mowing lawns,” Crocker said. “The big problem in the industry is it’s being promoted as, ‘You’re doing lawn care’ or ‘you’re doing tree care.’ I think you can apply it to so many different people.”

Crocker suggested industry professionals examine the segments of their industry that can appeal to people from other interest areas. Students interested in science and research, for example, might find plant pathology appealing, or art students might find their footing in landscape design. Even promoting it as a way of helping the environment – given that landscapers are on the frontline of sustainability practices – might be an effective recruiting tool.

Anna Baker, an MSU student, agreed with Crocker. Even having grown up on a cash crop farm, she still feels horticulture could’ve been better represented at school career fairs.

“I think there’s a disconnect in horticulture programs. It’s so much more than landscaping, lawns and turf,” Baker said. “We need to be marketing horticulture better.”

A BALANCING ACT. Myers said she’s noticed younger generations crave a better work-life balance, and in some ways, COVID-19 protocols have given them exactly that. For instance, they show up in staggered start times or report to the jobsite rather than the company headquarters to save time and to keep employees from riding in the same truck.

“All the other industries are going to offer these things,” Myers said. “If we get behind and don’t take those things into considerations, people will go find jobs in other industries. It’s as simple as that.”

Additionally, inflexibility with female employees is a recurring problem in the industry, Myers said. She pointed out that colleges have an equal male-to-female ratio, and at many, they are even predominantly female. But, despite a workforce shortage in the landscaping industry, there are still far more men working in the field than women.

One of the reasons why is some employees don’t have regular access to bathrooms while out in the field. At other companies, MSU student Abby Denning saw that the team uniforms were only designed for men.

During one job or internship interview, Denning said the interviewer asked her if she’d be OK working with some of the guys who were “rough around the edges.”

“The question was frustrating,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter to me how people appear. I want to work with who they are.”

ALL EYES ON THE FUTURE. Denning said people are going to start asking more questions about the industry now since the spotlight is on it.

“There’s a growing awareness on the homeowner’s side of things because they didn’t travel much for COVID,” she said. “They were all home.”

So, with all eyes on the industry, the students expressed hope that it would start embracing more modern practices, especially on the education side.

Franziska Collier, another student at Cuyamaca, said virtual internships may become an option in the future for segments of the industry that don’t require as much field work. Additionally, she believes teachers should be more open to asking questions about reading material since books can’t be updated and some information online is outdated.

“We should be able to question something,” Collier said. “Teachers and people in the industry should be open to that.”

In the classroom, students said they should be treated as though they’re in the field. That means more open-book tests rather than simply memorizing facts – professionals need to look things up all the time, like dealing with certain pests or what to do when a particular issue arises.