What Horticulturists do, and what one can do with a Degree in Horticulture
Horticulturists combine scientific knowledge and technical skills to grow and develop plants for better human nutrition, and to improve the aesthetic quality of our environment. They conduct research, develop technology, and assist public and private organizations. Businesses involved in production, marketing, and services offer many career opportunities. Production jobs include owning and managing greenhouses, nurseries, or fruit and vegetable growing businesses. Marketing jobs include wholesaling, distributing, and retailing horticultural crops and products. Service jobs include careers in teaching and research. Horticulture graduates are also needed as field supervisors, sales representatives, and directors and technical advisers in industries and flower cooperatives that process foods, produce seeds, and manufacture and distribute agricultural chemicals. Other possible jobs include landscape contractors, horticultural writers, quality-control personnel with food processors, and inspectors for various state federal regulatory agencies.
Where will the jobs be?
Graduates with bachelors degrees will find jobs in landscape construction, installation, and maintenance; management of garden centers and flower shops, crop production (fruits, vegetables, ornamental plants and flowers), and sales (chemicals and fertilizers). There will be an increasing demand for graduates in service-oriented areas such as landscape maintenance and interior plantscaping. Also, there will be opportunities in fruit and vegetable production and floriculture/ornamental industries.
Starting salaries of recent bachelors degree graduates range form $16,000 to $22,000. Those of recent masters degree graduates range from the middle to high $20,000s and people with a doctoral degree begin in the low to middle $40,000s.
Industry Outlook
Current trends in the horticultural industry should mean increasing job opportunities with retail florists, garden centers, growers of nursery and flower crops, interior plantscapers, and landscapers. However, less opportunities will be found in wholesale production activities.
The demand for bedding plants, potted flowering plants , and foliage plants is expected to increase. However, the demand for domestic cut flowers will probably decrease, and production in this area is expected to level off.
The National Picture
More than 48,000 employment openings are projected annually in the United States for new college graduates in food, agriculture, renewable natural resources, and related fields. Slightly more than 43,500 qualified college graduates are anticipated each year, resulting in a shortfall of of about 11 percent.
Employment information suggests that there may be more qualified graduates than needed in some agricultural and natural resource employment categories, such as farmers, ranchers, and communicators.