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More Feature Articles

January 2010
-Creature-Focused Careers
-Former Members Reflect: Dr. Dwight Armstrong
-Levy Randolph
-Safety on Speed Dial
-Preserving Their Culture
-Off and Away

November 2009
-Former Members Reflect: Emilie Bocker
-Turn That Down!
-Car Smarts
-So Much Cooler Online
-Laila Hajji
-The Water Way
-A Greater Cause

June 2009
-Stretch Your Summer Income
-Riley Branch
-Turn That Down
-Behind-The-Scenes Star

May 2009
-Welcoming Women
-Regina Holliday
-Job Interview Jitters
-So Much Cooler Online
-Questioning Your College Choices?

-A Can-Do Attitude
-Former Members Reflect: Michele Payn-Knoper

April 2009
-Hannah Crossen
-Cowboy Book With a Cause
-From FFA to 33Miles
-There’s Cash in Your Future
-I’m Angry…Now What?
-For the Love of Landscaping
-Perfect Balance
-Gardening For A Cause

February 2009
-Blue-Ribbon Banjo Player
-FFA as an Art Form
-Wild About Animals
-Nessie Early
-Be a PAL
-Full Throttle
-Living to Serve
-Special Invitation

January 2009
-All About National FFA Week
-Paul Moya
-Justin Floyd
-Partners for the Planet
-Finding Balance
-Swimming in Aquaculture
-Breaking Records
-Take It Slow

December 2008
-National FFA convention to rotate homes

November 2008
-Dr. Al Snyder
-Scholarship Secrets
-Gear Up for National FFA Week
-Kari Boettcher
-Resist Peer Pressure
-Good to the Last Crop
-All Creatures, Great and Small
-Sparking Interest

September 2008
-Agriculture Accuracy
-Crissa Fruechte
-Brady Revels
-Get Up!
-Proceed With Caution
-All in Good Taste
-Clutch Performance
-Step Right Up

July 2008
-Take It to a New Level
-Deep-Rooted Interest
-Take a Deep Breath
-Tyler Tenbarge
-Inspired by FFA
-On the Right Track

May 2008
-In the Vault
-Your Money: Keeping Records
-National Officer Q&A
-We’re All Unique
-Best in Show
-Grab Life by the Reins

March 2008
-Call to Order!
-Reality Check
-Turtle Power
-By the Numbers
-Dale Darling
-A Token of Appreciation
-National Officer Q&A

January 2008
-National Officer Q&A
-Back Talk: Paul McCutchan
-Building Bright Futures

November 2007
-National Officer Q&A
-Back Talk: Corey Flournoy
-Biofuels Mean Business
-Go, Team, Go
-A Tractor Tradition

October 2007
-National Officer Q&A
-Back Talk: Kristie VerMulm
-Give them an A+
-Cranberry Crazy
-Racing to Indy

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FFA Feature

For the Love of Landscaping

Cultivate a career in horticulture

April 2009

In most cases, you spend the majority of the day outside. You use your hands, but you also use your mind. You have to be creative, but it also helps to be practical. You’ve got to like hard work.

Sound like a job you’d like? Then consider a career in landscaping, where you’re almost always on the move, every day is different, and fresh air is the rule.

Landscaping – or the “green industry,” as insiders like to call it – is all about designing, building and maintaining outdoor spaces.

“Just look at any home, hospital, school, or any kind of structure, and what makes it pretty, in most cases, is the landscaping around it,” says Anna Walraven, director of industry development at the Professional Landcare Network (PLANET), an international association for landscaping pros. “Landscaping is a way to make the land and the green areas that you live in beautiful.”

Careers in landscaping run the gamut, Walraven says.

“It’s not just pushing around a mower or something like that, although it can be,” she explains. “It’s architecture of green space. It’s irrigation design. It’s arboriculture. It’s any number of different venues. There are even desk jobs for those people who want them. It all depends on what your interests are, how much you want to educate yourself, and how much you want to put yourself out there. The opportunities are endless.”

Many landscapers get their first taste of the job during high school. They land part-time work with a local lawn- or tree-care crew, and spend summers wielding shovels, shaping plant beds, trimming weeds, and pruning branches and hedges.

Consider these landscaping careers: Landscape architects analyze, plan, design and manage landscapes. Among the most educated in the landscaping profession, they’re often employed by engineering or architecture firms, and play an important role in providing the overall vision for a new landscape’s creation.

And while landscape architects certainly spend plenty of time outside scouting new sites, they also tend to log many hours in the office as they work on budgets, attend meetings and create designs on computer. The median salary for a landscape architect, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, was more than $55,000 in 2006, the most recent year for which data is available.

Landscape designers are similar to landscape architects. The main difference is that designers typically work on landscapes that are much smaller in scale. While landscape architects might tackle the technical details of a huge resort in Las Vegas (and let someone else come in and do the installation work), landscape designers, who have no specific educational requirements, would typically stick to simpler projects like upscale gardens and yards. Still, landscape designers often study their trade in college, and can even earn a graduate degree in the subject.

There are many other careers in landscaping as well, ranging from jobs in greenhouses raising the plants and shrubs used in landscape creation to turf management, irrigation design and installation, sales, construction, or mower and vehicle maintenance. You can be self-employed, or you can work for someone else as a laborer, an office manager, or truck driver.

Behind the scenes at almost every large landscaping company there are numerous jobs – outdoors or in – that make that business tick.

Story by Chris Hayhurst

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