Horticulture

By: Jack Stone

If you're obsessed with gardening and anything that even remotely involves plants, and their well being, then you’re probably a closet horticulturist. A horticulturist being classified as a person who grows and cultivates plants, amongst other things. In other words a gardener right? After all what’s in a name? A Rose by any other name is still a Rose. Clichéd words yes, but true nevertheless. The only difference between a horticulturist and a gardener is the fancy title, (and the money of course!) They get paid in money, you get paid in blooms. So, you can now go around telling your friends that you’re deep into the study of horticulture!

What is horticulture? It’s a funny thing really when you get right down to the roots of it. Horticulture by its very definition is the cultivation of a garden, or in other words, the science (or art) of cultivation of vegetables, fruits, plants, and flowers. A horticultural plant is defined as one that has been produced by cultivation, and not one that has grown without a helping hand.

Born of the union of two Latin words, hortus, meaning ‘garden plant’, and cultura, meaning ‘culture’,  horticulture in its truest form spans across many fields and involves many different types of careers, ranging from industry, to government, from wholesale and retail businesses, to propagators, plant breeders, and even educational institutions.

Horticulture enthusiasts will be interested to learn that there are five main areas of horticulture to choose from. Landscape horticulture, which is involved in the production and maintenance of landscape plants is one. Floriculture primarily deals with the marketing, and production of floral crops, whilst olericulture deals with vegetables cultivation.

Pomology, and postharvest physiology are the last two of the five areas of horticulture. The study of pomology is based on the cultivation, production, and marketing of fruits, whilst the study of postharvest physiology channels its energies into the promotion of crop quality, and reduction of overall spoilage for all crops.

So now that you have a general view of horticulture, and everything associated with it, perhaps you would really like to get yourself dug into it! If you are interested, there are always classes on horticulture that you could go take to share hours of gardening pleasure with like-minded souls. Perhaps you could even sign up for a night class or two, at your local community college. You’ll never know unless you try. Besides it’s always better to be up front and open with your friends and family, rather than being a closet horticulturist!