Ben Stickland, Colorado State University

Drawn to plants from a young age, Denver native Ben Stickland often walked to the park as a kid to collect thornless honey locust seeds to bring home. Spending time in his family’s backyard vegetable garden honed his appreciation for plants through the years.

After graduating high school in 2020, Stickland was browsing course catalogs from local universities when he spotted horticulture as an option at nearby Colorado State University. Entering CSU with a major in controlled environment horticulture, Stickland stumbled into a landscape design course as an elective. “It showed me that this industry is so much bigger than I imagined, and I fell in love with it,” he says — so much so that he declared landscape design and contracting as a second major.

Throughout his college career, Stickland gained industry experience working one summer in a nursery and another as a landscape intern. This year, as a senior, he’s been bolstering his greenhouse skills as CSU’s Annual Trial Garden coordinator, managing a small team of gardeners while collecting growth performance data on nearly 1,000 plant entries.

As he prepares to graduate, Stickland is blending his experiences across horticulture and landscaping as he looks for opportunities to apply his knowledge in the field.

Coordinating CSU trials

CSU’s trial gardens span about 2.5 acres, split up among annual trials, perennial trials, a perennial demonstration garden and a Plant Select demonstration garden devoted to introductions inspired by the growing conditions of the Intermountain West.

This year, the Annual Trial Garden that Stickland oversees received 960 entries totaling more than 10,000 individual plants from several breeders that partner with the university.

“We’re part of a larger network of trial gardens across the country that trial new varieties in the market to see how well they’ll do in specific environments,” Stickland explains. “In Colorado, it’s super dry with intense solar radiation and a short growing season with a lot of temperature extremes. We’re trialing new plants under these conditions and collecting data on plant size, flower timing, color, vigor and survivability.”

Specifically, Stickland was intrigued by the specialization of plants tailored to Colorado’s low-water, high-sun conditions. This year’s introductions included Anigozanthos (kangaroo paws) for the first time, along with several lantanas and sun-loving coleus. “Traditionally, coleus has been a shade plant, but almost every single coleus entry this year was trialed for the sun,” he says, “and all of them did unbelievably well. That was a very cool trend we got to see.”

Combining disciplines

Although Stickland’s research in the trial garden focused on annual ornamentals, other greenhouse experience throughout his coursework involved growing hydroponic lettuce. Ideally, he wants to find a career bridging his horticulture research with his landscaping experience.

“A trend I’m really excited about is melding ornamental and vegetable varieties and reintroducing food crops into the ornamental sphere,” he says. “There are so many opportunities for our industry to make landscapes multi-use by selecting plants that are beautiful but also productive.”

Stickland sees opportunity in the “production of plants that do more than one thing,” he says — whether it’s using native plants that support pollinators, wildlife and ecological restoration, or planting landscapes that provide therapeutic value and community engagement potential.

“Being from Colorado, reducing water is always on everybody’s minds,” he says. “Using native plants is a great way to solve a lot of problems at the same time and also push the industry in a direction that has so much opportunity for growth.”

Stickland is not alone in this quest for multi-functional plants and multi-disciplinary collaboration. Several of his classmates are also pursuing double majors in horticulture and landscaping, seeking opportunities at the intersection of both domains. “Our generation is really interested in bridging gaps in disciplines and bringing different fields together,” he says.

Looking ahead

With graduation inching closer, Stickland is considering graduate school to further his education. But first, he plans to spend a few years working in the industry, gaining more exposure to the career paths that horticulture offers. “This industry is just so big,” he says. “I haven’t even scratched the surface.”

Battling “the misconception that horticulture is all about flowers,” Stickland urges his plant-loving peers to explore all the potential avenues this field offers — from food production to turf management to tree and lawn care.

“There are so many cool resources like expositions, career fairs and magazines that are really good at connecting people with different aspects of the industry,” he says. “My best advice is to get involved and engage with the horticulture community wherever possible.”

Similarly, he encourages horticulture employers to embrace lifelong learning, spurring workers to keep expanding their knowledge in this field. “Promoting opportunities for continued education is one of the best things that employers can do to attract people my age,” he says. “Our industry looks nothing like it did 20 years ago, and it’s super cool that we get to keep growing with it.”

Brooke Bilyj owns and operates Bantamedia, a national award-winning content, PR and SEO firm based in Cleveland. She is a frequent contributor to GIE Media’s horticulture publications.