Major: Landscaping
If you enjoy planning, planting, and maintaining your own garden, you might want to turn your hobby into a career as a landscaper or groundskeeper. As a student of landscaping, you'll learn about horticulture, the science of growing plants. Horticulture covers such topics as plant growth, nutrition, and identification as well as pruning, fertilization, and pest management.
There’s more to this major than horticulture, though. You'll also learn basic design and drafting, cost estimation, equipment operation and maintenance, personnel supervision, and business practices. These skills prepare you for working for others or running your own landscaping business.
Students of landscaping programs learn to care for plants and groundcovers in ornamental and recreational settings, such as athletic fields, city parks, and residential yards.
Did You Know?
- Landscapers and groundskeepers may work for a building contractor, an architecture firm, a landscape nursery, or a construction firm. Or they may run their own business.
Are You Ready To...?
- Use computers
- Learn plant propagation (reproduction) techniques
- Identify plant types
- Learn business skills
- Create your own landscape designs
- Study principles of landscape design
- Use basic math skills
- Identify and control plant diseases and pests
- Design irrigation systems
- Study fertilizers and soil management
- Work outdoors
It Helps to Be...
Physically fit and able to work outside for long periods of time. Good communication skills are a necessity, especially if you plan on supervising other workers or running your own business.
College Checklist
- For what types of careers does the program prepare you? Is job-placement assistance available?
- Does the program sponsor student clubs or activities related to landscaping and horticulture?
- Are there opportunities for internships or off-campus study programs?
- Check out the department’s facilities. There should be plenty of classroom, lab, garden, and greenhouse space.
- What are the interests and backgrounds of the professors?
Did You Know?
- Certain types of grasses are ideal for lawns because they do not need to be watered frequently and are slow growing, so they can be mowed less often.
Course Spotlight
Wide expanses of thick, lush grass are a key component of many landscape designs -- think of golf courses, roadside areas, athletic fields, and parks.
If you want to care for these types of areas, you’ll have to take a course or two in turf and turfgrass management. Through lectures and field trips, you’ll learn about turf species, uses, and quality; planting areas by seeding or laying sod; mowing practices; irrigation; pest control; and turf problems, such as weeds.
