After the conference, the students toured citrus and fruit production farms, ranches, and horticulture nurseries in central Florida. Ag Reserves Inc. was included in the tour. Students learned about citrus and about the disease citrus greening, which is causing a lot of damage to citrus crops in Florida. Student and faculty also got to tour Deseret Cattle and Citrus. The Ranch is the largest cow-calf operation in the United States. Part of the tour of Deseret Cattle and Citrus, the students and faculty took an air boat ride of some of the Ranch. Parts of the ranch are only accessible by boat. Disney Nurseries at Disney World, Orlando, FL was the next stop on the trip. Disney seeks for interns to take part of a six-month internship experience below is how to apply, they are always interested in interns from BYUI. Student and faculty toured The Land exhibit at Epcot Them Park at Disney World, Orlando, FL. Several BYU-Idaho students have interned at the exhibit and a few have stayed on and worked full time after their internship experiences. The tour continued to various parts of the Disney World Theme Parks and they even had extra time to enjoy a few rides!
Visit our Department Facebook page for more photos of the event and follow the Fashion and Floral Gala page for future events. Wedding Dresses From This Year This semester the floral students got to visit San Francisco! After driving for a day and a half the students first got to go see Golden Gate Park botanical gardens. The gardens had plants from all around the world. The students enjoyed strolling through the park and visiting food shops along the way. They also visited the Golden Gate bridge and found a perfect spot for pictures of the bridge. The day ended with dinner and the sunset. Day 2 in San Francisco was even more exciting. They visited the flower market in the morning and the pier in the evening. There was some free time this day and many students shopped around the pier and visited Chinatown. After lunch everyone jumped on a ferry and visited Alcatraz. Many enjoyed learning the history of this once dreaded island and loved seeing the plants and gardens there. Thursday was the 3rd day, the students got to visit a Japanese garden. They enjoyed the peace and quiet there and then headed off to the De Young Museum. This was a special week at the De Young Museum, they were showcasing a flowers to art exhibit. Florist from the area come to the museum and interpret a painting and create a floral arrangement of that interpretation. This was a favorite for many of the students. After the exhibit they drove to various touristy sights like the adult slide and Lombard Street. They ended the night with pizza and hotel tv. The last day sightseeing was Friday. The students got to visit Filoli Gardens where they enjoyed the many flowers and the historical house for viewing. Students loved eating at the gardens for lunch and wished they could stay forever. But they had to move on to the next sight, flower shops. Jmiller flowers in Oakland was one of their stops. The owner took the students on a tour of the shop and told them tips for owning a shop. After the shops they visited the Oakland Temple grounds. They enjoyed the beautiful view for a s long as they could till they set off again for Reno for the night and home the next day. Though this trip may have had some speed bumps along the way this trip and the relationships created will never be forgotten. If you ever can go on a field trip with our department, do it! They help you network, gain experience, and let you see places you haven't seen before, and that makes it worth it.
Students made and sampled food in the Edible Landscaping class this semester. In this course, students learn to develop the principles and practical applications for fruit and vegetables. They learn how to plant edible foods, prune and harvest, and how to store them properly. There is a prerequisite for this class, so it is not for everyone. But those who take it learn different recipes and skills that they can use for the rest of their lives! Part of the class is the eating of the food, the students are assigned a certain vegetable or fruit and they make dishes with it and share. It is lots of fun and sometimes there is a meal involved!
How I Came Alive Outside Kimberly Rubert When children are small (at least when I was small) all that is important is play and discovery. When I was young, this very explorative attitude quite often took me out into my grandpa’s pasture that was directly behind our small house. It was something different every day it seemed; “fishing” on the ditch banks with weeds, playing on rusty abandoned farm equipment, Cowboys and Indians, trying to lasso cows to ride, you name it. He even had a pond that we built a tree swing over and we would jump off into the water. It was nasty algae water riddled with garter snakes, but it was all part of the fun. Looking back, I almost wish I was that carefree again! I would almost always come home with mud in my hair and broken nails. It was the essence of life. William Shakespeare said, “The earth has music for those who listen”. I think as a child it is important to learn early what nature is trying to say to you; to learn to speak the language and ‘listen’. If a person has that solid foundation when they are young, I don’t think it can ever fully recede. It will always be a part of you. Of course, priorities change as we get older, and it’s not a bad thing. Looking backwards on my childhood I can see where a shift started happening in me. I got my first bike when I was about ten years old. Instead of riding cows and swimming in murky ponds, I was more taken with jumping and wrecking that poor, beat up bike. My brother and I would ride everywhere, but mostly it was around our driveway and down the dirt road in my grandpa’s pasture. It was an extremely bumpy road, worn into the dirt by the constant “stop-and-go” of my grandpa feeding the cows from the back of his truck, so in that respect it was perfect. We would have jumping and trick contests, but it often resulted in crashing because the jumps weren’t really that big. My brother even broke his arm once. So then we gained a brain cell or two and made our own jump. We found miscellaneous nails, screws, two-by-fours, and ply wood, and we constructed our own jump. From dawn to dusk we rode, and eventually my parents got a little cranky because we had worn a figure 8 in the driveway and front lawn. The rest of that summer we helped my dad build a ‘racetrack’ in the back yard by his shop. He borrowed my grandpa’s tractor, and we moved in some topsoil and rocks so that we could make big jumps and obstacles on this track. I swear my brother and I spent our entire lives out there that summer, and the next. Eventually life got busy and we got into our high school sports, and hanging out with friends took precedence over anything else… but this isn’t the end of the story. In this paper we are supposed to answer a question. “How do childhood interactions with the outdoors continue to affect us in positive ways for the rest of our lives?” I graduated high school and went to Alaska to work, and as we all know, Alaska is the mecca for the outdoor life. I grew to love the mountains, and I also made a lifelong friend. Her name is Kelsie, and although we met in Alaska we had grown up in the same town. Even after coming home from Alaska, we continued to spend time with each other. Kelsie’s favorite thing to do was mountain bike, and so by default we would go together. This is how my current hobby was born, and the love I have for nature and the beauty of the mountains is continually growing. Everyone has different reasons why they love to be outside, but mine are very specific and personal; as I think is common for everyone as well. Before I became a horticulture major I noticed things that I didn’t know the meaning of. Patterns and colors and smells. I noticed how I felt when I rode around water falls, lakes, trees in the fall, mud, boulders, and every other kind of scenery. They all brought different feelings to me, for example: If I had to climb over boulders I would be in a nervous excitement. It was hard! But it was also the most rewarding to reach the top. Waterfalls and rivers would also bring different feelings than a riding around a lake that was still. I did notice one thing; that all of these emotions and feelings were positive, calming and restorative. I yearned for this whenever I was on vacation or in school. It’s really hard for me to describe in words how mountain biking really affects me, even to my very soul, but I think the famous poet, Ralph Waldo Emmerson, said it quite accurately, “In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.” Wild delight. Just let that sink in. Nature is a delight, no matter the hobby, and even if you’re down or sad. Do you want to know the best part? There is enough for everyone. Every single human being. Things like this are meant to be shared, and my one goal is to help people understand what being in nature does to you. It’s astounding. It’s exhilarating. It’s outside. 
Every year floral students from BYU-Idaho have the opportunity to go to Portland Oregon to work on the parade floats for the Portland Rose Parade. The girls got to work on 14 to 15 different parade floats using only natural mediums such as flowers, seeds, leaves and even vegetables. While there were there they also visited a Japanese garden as well as a Chinese and a couple rose gardens. They had lots of fun and worked hard to get the floats ready for the parade. One of the great things about our Horticulture Department is the trips. For the woody plant identification class this semester the students traveled up to the Portland Oregon area from June 6th to the 11th. They got to visit different companies, see plants in a different climate, and enjoy some of the great sights of Oregon. Students saw the many waterfalls in the Portland area, hiking the paths and climbing down to be as close as possible to the beautiful water. In Newport the students visited a couple different beaches, looking for crabs, anemones and other sea life. While there they went for a boat ride and did some crabbing and whale watching. Seven Dees Landscaping was next, the students toured the facility and learned about the different jobs available for them in the future. Visiting Iseli’s Nursery and Baily’s Nursery was exciting as well, students collected cones and saw many new cultivars as well as learned how the production world works. The Chinese and Japanese Gardens and the Portland Rose Gardens were saved for the last day, there the students relaxed and learned in the natural but well-kept gardens before heading home. If you ever have the chance to travel in your classes, be sure to take advantage of the great experiences you will have and friendships you will make on these trips. “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” – Anonymous |
Mission StatementOur aim for the Department of Horticulture at Brigham Young University-Idaho is to nurture understanding of both the art and science of Horticulture. Students learn experimentally in the classroom, laboratory, greenhouse, and ten acre Thomas E. Ricks demonstration garden as they pursue an Associates or Bachelors Degree. Using the medium of plants, students develop habits of hard work, enlightened minds, and healthy living that assist in gainful employment opportunitues. |
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