PHOTOS BY STEPHANIE SCHUPSKA
ALUMNI PROFILE
BY FAITH PEPPERS
For local gardening information
call 1-800-ASKUGA1 or visit
ugaextension.com
Science, Art Converge as
Horticulturists Ply Craft
W
arm rays of spring sunshine kiss the frostbitten
faces of bright yellow pansies lining the front
walkway. Branches laden with cherry blossoms soften the
nippy breeze. As the birds offer up their morning songs,
Mildred Pinnell Fockele surveys the glorious blue sky
that forms her office ceiling and admires the
watercolor blooms that paint the walls.
For Fockele, it just wouldn’t be enough
to work in an office overlooking such
beauty. Like a growing number of
other professionals in the
blossoming world of
horticulture, she has to
be out there in it.
6 • SOUTHSCAPES • SPRING 2006
For more information about the
Atlanta Botanical Garden call
404-876-5859 or visit
www.atlantabotanicalgarden.org
Mildred Pinnell Fockele (MS – Horticulture, ’87), left, and
Amanda Campbell Briner (BSA – Horticulture, ’01) take a
break on a Monday when the Atlanta Botanical Garden is
closed to show off the garden.
For the past 19 years, Fockele has
worked for the Atlanta Botanical Garden.
She is now the garden’s horticulture
director.
Having all this natural
beauty as a daily work
space and not just a
weekend getaway would
be a dream for some. Of
course, not everyone sees
digging in the dirt as a
career.
“It’s fun,” Fockele
said. “You get to do a lot
of different things. You
aren’t just stuck at a
desk doing a repetitive
job... But some people
seem to look down
on professions where
you work with your
hands and get dirty. I
think horticulture is an
art form. It’s really science
and art working together.”
Today, she oversees the
outdoor gardens of the Atlanta
Botanical Garden. She’s also
helping develop their new 185-acre
woodland gardens in Gainesville, Ga.
Fockele discovered a real love
for working with plants while working
on her biology degree at Agnes Scott
College in Decatur, Ga. “I was on a
work-study program at Agnes Scott,
and my job was to work in the college’s
greenhouses,” she recalled. “I had a
professor who said, ‘If this is what you
love, then we should go talk to the
botanical gardens about an internship.’
And, so, that’s what I did. I was the first
intern ever hired here.”
Garden
Reading
For the garden lovers, Mildred Pinnell
Fockele recommends these magazines
and books:
American Gardener, Fine
Gardening, Horticulture, The Garden.
MAGAZINES:
“Manual of Woody Landscape
Plants” (Mike Dirr), “The WellTended Perennial Garden”
(Tracy DiSabato-Aust), “Organic
Gardener’s Handbook of Natural
Insect and Disease Control,”
“A Southern Garden” (Elizabeth
Lawrence) and “The Essential
Earthman” (Henry Mitchell)
BOOKS:
When she graduated,
she went to the University
of Georgia College
of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences
for her master’s degree.
“I actually started out
in botany,” she said. “But
I did another internship
here in the summer, and
the director convinced me
I needed to switch over to
horticulture. She called up
(UGA horticulture professor)
Mike Dirr, and he was able
to get me into the spot of a
student who was leaving.”
Fockele’s not the only
CAES alumna at the Atlanta
Botanical Garden. Four years
ago, Amanda Briner (BSA
– Horticulture ’01) joined
Fockele’s staff.
“I grew up on a farm, and I
had no inclination about spending
my career indoors,” Briner said.
SPRING 2006 • SOUTHSCAPES • 7
Here’s
Hort!
GRADUATING SENIORS’
VIEW OF HORTICULTURE
“I had to go into something outdoors.
I, too, started in botany but quickly
figured out it was that hands-on, practical
application that I wanted and switched
over to horticulture.”
Amanda Briner knew all along where
her interest lay. “There’s so much to
choose from in that major. But I knew
right off the bat that I wanted to be in
public horticulture,” she said. “I wasn’t
tied to the Atlanta area. So I felt that with
all the botanical gardens in the U.S., I
had a very solid education that could
help me get a job at one of them. It just
happened to work out that I got one
here.”
The fact that both were originally
in botany and switched to horticulture
comes as no surprise to CAES horticulture
8 • SOUTHSCAPES • SPRING 2006
department head Doug Bailey. “Only
8 percent of our students start with our
department as freshmen,” he said. “More
than 60 percent are internal transfers
from other colleges within UGA.”
Fockele and Briner agree that the
CAES program is a solid education
program. But learning horticulture,
they say, requires some dirt under your
fingernails.
“You can learn all you want in a
classroom,” Fockele said, “but until you
actually get out there and watch plants
suffer or look at pests all over a plant or
have to amend the soil, you just don’t
get it.”
“You can only go so far in the
classroom with such an outdoors, handson job,” Briner said.
he vast majority of horticulture
students in the University of
Georgia College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences are Georgia
urbanites who discover horticulture after
they arrive on campus. That’s what CAES
horticulture department head, Doug
Bailey, has found through annual surveys
of graduating seniors.
“They chose us because they wanted
a job working outdoors with plants
in an environmentally friendly field,”
Bailey said. “They like our department
because we’re personable and caring,
have a family atmosphere (even in a
large university setting), have a renowned
faculty and offer a lot of hands-on
experiences in our coursework.”
Bailey said the department’s biggest
challenges come out in the surveys.
“We need to upgrade our facilities
and offer more hands-on experiences
to enhance the current undergraduate
program,” he said. “Given the origin
of our students, we intend to continue
concentrating our recruitment efforts
toward students currently enrolled at
UGA who are seeking a major or who
To address that need, Bailey’s faculty
has begun creating innovative programs.
The HORT2000 class, for instance,
incorporates service-learning and other
hands-on applications so students see
how many times a day their lives come in
contact with horticulture.
“Everyone uses our products, from
choosing what’s fresh in the grocery-store
produce aisle to what’s grown in their
landscapes,” Bailey said. The hort classes
“have a food day, where students bring in
a dish made with a horticulture product.
They do a pumpkin carving. They care for
a plant all semester and get involved with
service learning.”
The course is so popular that it
doubled this year to more than 300
fit the profile of our majors. We still have
more job offers in Georgia than we have
graduates. So increasing enrollment is still
a departmental goal.”
Here’s a look at CAES horticulture, along
with some survey results:
Number of students:
109 undergraduates and an average
of 20 graduate students.
Focus: Most students are interested
in ornamental horticulture — the
landscaping and nursery end of it.
Emphasis areas: The department is
divided into:
1. General horticulture, which gives
the broadest view of horticulture.
2. Landscape horticulture, which
emphasizes residential design.
It’s more specific for those
who want a career in the landscape
installation or maintenance.
3. Horticulture science, which is
for students who want a more basic
science approach and plan to go
on to graduate school.
graduates come from an agricultural
background. Only 17 percent were in
4-H and 5 percent in FFA. Mostly, they’re
urbanites who are their families’ first
generation in agriculture.
Most don’t start in horticulture as
freshmen. Only 8 percent do, while
62 percent transfer from other colleges
within UGA and 30 percent transfer from
other institutions.
Right now, most students (70 percent)
are in general horticulture, while 25
percent are in landscape and 5 percent in
horticulture science.
Why horticulture?
Half of the students enjoyed working
with plants or had positive gardening
experiences. Half also wanted a career
or a major leading to a career that would
allow them to work outdoors. Other
top reasons: they had previous work
experience in horticulture and enjoyed it
(17 percent), and they wanted a career in
an environmental field (12 percent).
Where they’re headed:
Most are finding jobs in landscape
firms. After that, it’s pretty broad-based,
from organic production farms in
California to floriculture greenhouses in
the Pacific Northwest to agrochemical
sales, public horticulture and so on.
Why CAES horticulture?
More than half say it’s a friendly
department with a faculty that cares and
wants to help, and 49 percent say faculty
members are very knowledgeable in their
areas. Armitage and Dirr literally wrote
the books being used in horticulture
classes around the country. Others like
the small number in each class and the
small-school feel.
Still growing:
The Green Industry has been among
the fastest growing segments of the
Georgia economy for almost a decade.
As long as housing starts and business
development continue to grow, they will
need landscaping for it.
Where students come from:
Only 14 percent of CAES horticulture
PHOTOS BY STEPHANIE SCHUPSKA
T
Mildred Fockele and Amanda Briner examine
new arrivals for aphids (left and above) before
placing them into their new home at the Atlanta
Botanical Garden.
(continued on page 10)
SPRING 2006 • SOUTHSCAPES • 9
PHOTOS BY STEPHANIE SCHUPSKA
Don’t Just Go
by the
Book
Mildred Fockele, horticulture director at the Atlanta Botanical
Garden, and Amanda Briner, a horticulturist on Fockele’s staff,
say students need more than even the greatest classes to be
ready for work. They offer this advice:
• DO AN INTERNSHIP.
“I’d even say, ‘Do as many internships as you can fit in,’”
Briner said. “Go to a variety of places. And do a variety
of different kinds of internships so that you get not only
exposure to different parts of the country, but also different
facets of the industry.”
• GET OUT AND SEE THE INDUSTRY.
“Even if you aren’t doing an internship,” Fockele said, “get
out and visit a greenhouse. Visit a nursery. Work locally at
a grower, or visit a huge wholesale grower. Go visit a golf
course. Get out and get to know the industry that you’re
getting training to get into.”
The rose garden at the Atlanta Botanical Garden does not have a typical collection of hybrid beauties.
Instead, Fockele wanted to have roses that reflected what someone might see in their grandmother’s
garden. Varieties are selected for fragrance, among other key characteristics.
students. It will be offered twice each
semester next year to accommodate the
demand.
“I think if you go through that
program, if you didn’t already have a
genuine love of plants, you will definitely
The smell of compost tea gets to Briner as she
and Fockele explain how the foul-smelling liquid
benefits their garden.
10 • SOUTHSCAPES • SPRING 2006
come out of it just loving plants and the
horticulture industry,” Briner said.
Bailey’s annual survey of graduating
seniors shows that the small class size,
caring faculty and the faculty’s strong
reputation in the industry attract the most
students.
“The program does have a good
reputation,” Fockele said. “Part of that
was based on the reputation of professors
like Dirr and (Allan) Armitage. There
are a lot of connections through the
horticulture department to people in the
industry, so there’s a good network there
for students. It’s a nice, broad-based
program, so you’re well versed when
you get out. You have a number of jobs
available to you.”
Bailey said Georgia’s green industry
has four to five available jobs to
every graduating student. “We aren’t
graduating enough students to meet the
industry demand.”
That’s a good problem to have if
you’re a graduating senior looking for
work. “One of the greatest selling points
for a degree in horticulture is the growth
in the industry,” Briner said. “In some
“People can go all the way through that program and never
go out to visit the CAES horticulture farm near Athens in
Oconee County,” Briner said. “Going out to the farm and
seeing what’s out there and starting to get that hands-on
experience while you’re in school is very, very important.”
• TAKE ADVANTAGE OF WHAT’S THERE.
“Take real courses your senior year,”
Briner said. “The classes offered in the
CAES horticulture department are
great. Take advantage of all the
offerings they have.”
One of Briner’s favorite places at the Atlanta
Botanical Garden is more arid than lush. The
cactus garden has been her baby since she
started working there. Above, she photographs
the plants to keep track of them.
areas, you get a degree in it and you
don’t know if you’ll be able to get a job.
But for horticulture, it has really taken off.
Horticulture is an industry that has always
been there, will always be there and is
only getting bigger. And it’s fun.”
2005 • SOUTHSCAPES • 11
SPRING 2006