Horticulture Careers - Willoway Nurseries

Summary

The video profiles horticulture work and career opportunities at Willoway Nurseries, highlighting the coordination, practical experience, and planning involved in commercial plant production.

Main Responsibilities and Operations

• Shipping management: A shipping manager oversees pulling plants to loading areas, quality control, and truck loading. The department has about 60 employees and ships roughly 30 truckloads per day companywide.
• Production planning: Crop schedules are based on customer demand and sales from previous years. Cuttings must be planted on time because delays can affect rooting and crop quality. Seasonal crops—including spring color crops, poinsettias, and mums—require advance scheduling.
• Crop monitoring: Staff regularly inspect crops and facilities to ensure plants have enough space, are trimmed and pinched on schedule, and remain free of insects and disease.
• Seasonal work: During busy periods, employees ship and pull plants for garden centers while preparing plants for the next production cycle. Tasks can include planting trees, trimming, and preparing plants for watering.
• Tree liner program: The nursery is developing young trees from seedlings or tissue-culture plants. These small plants are grown in greenhouses before being raised into larger trees.

Career Preparation and Advice

• Associate or bachelor’s degrees can be useful, as can horticulture programs focused on areas such as agronomy, botany, or landscape horticulture.
• Hands-on experience is especially important. An internship is presented as a strong way to gain practical experience alongside classroom learning.
• Graduates should be prepared to start in a lower-ranking nursery or greenhouse position and work their way up, rather than expect to immediately land a senior role.
• A good grower needs a basic understanding of how and why plants grow, along with the ability to apply that knowledge to production practices.

Changes in the Industry

• Tighter profit margins have led to more intensive production schedules. Nurseries need to grow plants faster and deliver them to market at precisely the right time.
• Crops intended for holidays or key selling dates must be scheduled to be ready in advance—for example, the week before Mother’s Day or Memorial Day.
• Research and development are helping the industry develop new techniques, making sound horticultural knowledge important for adapting to change.

Willoway’s Internship Program

• Internships are paid, and on-site housing is available for students coming from out of town or state.
• Interns gain exposure to several areas, including production, pot-in-pot production, field maintenance, sales, marketing, and the business side of the company.
• They may also participate in educational opportunities such as trade shows and training sessions.
• The program is intended to help students understand the broader green industry and explore how a career at Willoway might fit their goals.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Unnamed Willoway shipping manager: Describes shipping operations, crop and production responsibilities, and career preparation.
• Unnamed Willoway employee or manager involved in production and crop planning: Discusses scheduling, crop monitoring, tree production, and industry changes. The subtitles do not make clear whether this is the same speaker as the shipping manager.
• Unnamed Willoway internship representative: Describes the internship program and its benefits.