Gateways into the industry

Gaining your first year of experience

By Daniel Fuller

Are you looking for a way to start your horticulture career, or know someone who is? Finding that first job in the industry can be tricky; many desirable roles require industry experience, but how does one get that experience in the first place?

Recently, I met one of the most passionate plant people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. This person couldn’t contain himself and kept bringing the conversation back to his passion, which was aroids. The non-plant people around the table kept trying to change the topic to no avail.

I asked this person what he did for work, and he explained that he was labouring for a construction company but wanted a job working with aroids. He quit a nursery job a few years ago because he couldn’t work with the exact plants he wanted, and he also found it was a bit too repetitive. After learning about my industry podcast, building a job board and writing the careers column for the Journal, he asked me for guidance on how to get back into the industry. But my advice was not well received.

I suggested that he had taken a detour and that working in an imperfect role adjacent to his dream was the best move. If he had stayed in that role, he’d have several years of industry experience by now, making him an attractive candidate for roles closer to his real dream of working with aroids.

You see, it’s unlikely that you’ll gain a prestigious job like a Plant Curator at your local Botanic Gardens straight out of TAFE or university. Nor should you. Imagine the aroid person getting the job and replacing half the plants with aroids because he loves them so much. Many might be resentful because he hasn’t put in the hours needed to fail enough times to become the type of person capable of consistently making the right call on ‘right plant, right place’.

Unrealistic expectations can prevent you from achieving your dreams, so from my own experience, my advice is to follow the old permaculture advice, ‘take small and slow steps’.

If becoming a plant curator is your dream role, you may wish to gain a qualification like a Diploma or Bachelor’s Degree in horticulture and attend volunteer events at the Botanic Gardens to build your resume and network. These are small steps, but they give you a couple of rungs on the ladder to success.

Meanwhile, you might like to get an entry-level role in a nursery or maintenance company, performing repetitive tasks that will help build the skills needed to take further steps up the ladder. If you work for a larger maintenance company with good contracts, you may be promoted to crew leader within a year or two; especially if you communicate your ambition with your manager and consistently over-perform. 

The bar can be set pretty low at some maintenance companies. However, a bit of passion mixed with competence goes a long way.

Besides tempering expectations, you must also be clear about your goals because ‘working with aroids’ is not specific enough. Are we talking about tissue culture, retail nursery customer service, or plant breeding? Or maybe a communication role, because if you can’t stop talking about the plants you love, you may as well incorporate that into your conception of a dream job.

It doesn’t matter if you’re entering the workforce for the first time or navigating a mid-career shift into horticulture. You’ll probably need to start at the bottom of the ladder to prove yourself before you’re ready for your dream job, and having a clear vision of the dream makes it possible to journey in the right direction. 

I advise anybody starting a horticultural career to try their hand at menial work in a nursery or a maintenance company. It might seem repetitive and overly simple on the surface, but you’ll pick up small daily lessons that will accumulate into a foundation of experience that you can use to take another step closer to your dream. Each step you take up the ladder brings you closer to your desired job.

Mid-career shifters may be able to use proven skills like leadership and time management to fast-track their progress. But everybody needs to kill a few hundred plants before they become truly great horticulturists, so we all need to take on seemingly menial roles to begin with.

You may never get to the position you dream of now because it might be unrealistic, or you may not be suited to that type of role. You might even get that dream job one day and realise it isn’t what you thought it was. But there’s no way to know unless you decide to set a course for success and start with a small step.

Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Horticulture is a humble profession, and overestimating the value you bring to a workplace is a great way to stay in a holding pattern for years in the wrong industry instead of taking an imperfect job in the right industry.

Daniel Fuller

M: 042 6169 708

E: hello@plantsgrowhere.com

W: plantsgrowhere.com

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