Landscape Horticulturist is a person who selects, handles and utilizes trees, shrubs and ornamental plants and turf grass for the design, development and maintenance of public and private landscaping spaces. Prepares soil, plants, cultivates, prunes and irrigates to maintain plant vigor. Controls plant pests utilizing appropriate integrated pest management techniques.

What do these workers do?
(Source: BC Work Futures)

The responsibilities of a landscape horticulturist technician or technologist include landscape design and implementation, seed propagation and disease and pest control, as well as maintaining and constructing gardens, landscapes and even golf courses and playing fields. Workers need a good knowledge of ornamental and food plants, trees and shrubs.

Work in the field. Your duties may include growing plants from seedlings and then planting them in landscapes. You may lay an entire field of sod and nurture it into a baseball field. Another facet of the job is building fences, gates and garden trellises. Expertise in drainage, plant rotation and irrigation is also helpful.

Communicate with clients. An important part of the job is communicating with clients. Some clients will want to be closely involved in the landscaping process, from beginning to end. You will have to let them know about the job's progress and problems that might come up, and incorporate their needs and ideas about garden design, preferred materials and plants in a professional manner.

Propagate plants. Some of your time will be spent in the greenhouse propagating flowers, trees, shrubs and fruit. Knowing how to increase plant yield will help you create productive gardens. As part of the propagation process you will pick up seeds and place them by hand, delicate work that requires focus and concentration.

Use garden chemicals. Some landscape technicians have a working understanding of chemical fertilizers, fungicides, herbicides, hormones and natural growing methods that support strong, healthy plants. You will also need to know the local and provincial safety regulations that restrict the use of poisonous landscaping chemicals and, in some situations, you will need an applicators license to use them. A landscape technician also needs to know how to disinfect, store and transport plants.

Create planting plans. Part of a horticulturist's job is to create an image of the mature garden. This can be done on graph paper or on the computer with horticultural drafting programs. Once the mature garden has been designed, the technician works backwards to determine the type and density of plantings required to produce the end result and specifies the time frame over which the garden should reach a mature state.

Read the full Landscape Horticulturist Profile (40Kb pdf).

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