Gardening as a Career

We’ve all dreamed of turning our hobby into a career that makes us money, but how many of us are brave enough to take the plunge and follow our dreams? Why not turn your love of gardening into more than just a hobby? It is possible, even if you work full time. You’ll need dedication and commitment, but the achievement of the long term goal of doing a job you love will make the hard work worth it!

Career Options

Gardening isn’t a highly paid career but can still be very lucrative. If you’re not able to devote yourself to a full time gardening career you could set up a part time business helping people during evenings and weekends. A few simple flyers, posters and adverts in local magazines will soon find you work. Who knows - you might find in time you get enough work to give up the day job!

For those wishing to follow a more serious horticultural career there are plenty of options available, including:

• Running your own gardening business
• Amenity and landscape horticulture
• Garden design
• Horticultural retailing
• Garden centre work
• Nursery work

Gardening Training

Gardening training is a valuable resource and can be taken at all levels, from single day workshops to a degree. It will depend on how much time you have available. Also, you’ll need to take into account how much a course will cost you.

Besides giving you a gardening qualification taking a course can be a great way to mix with like-minded budding horticulturalists. Your course may include some work experience – a useful way to find long-term work.

What You’ll Learn

Depending on the course you choose you’ll learn a wide variety of skills. You might just want to improve your gardening skills with a short course on propagation, pruning, organics or design, or you may be lucky enough to be able to study gardening full-time.

A full-time course will cover several core subjects and is also likely to contain options for selection, depending on where you want to specialise. Possible subjects will be: plant and soil knowledge and science, propagation, organic and sustainable horticulture, machinery, arboriculture, garden planning and design, plant protection, people and business management and marketing. So much more than just learning how to grow plants!

Where to Learn

Many colleges run both full and part-time gardening courses. A college of horticulture will specialise in gardening courses. Gardening workshops are often run by local gardening experts – try your local council for details. Courses are also advertised in local newspapers.

Look out for careers events run by local colleges, where you can talk to the tutors and find out what it’s really like to study gardening professionally.

If you don’t have the time to spend attending a course there are many on-line gardening courses available. Try www.inst.org who offer a diploma in garden design and a diploma in horticulture.