HILA Lifetime Achievement Award winner John Gaydos reflects on horticultural legacy after retirement

John Gaydos may not be formally credentialed with a Ph.D. or Ed.D., but he embodies what makes a truly great teacher. He has the heart, instinct and skill of a natural educator. John knows how to connect with people, listen with genuine curiosity and teach from real experience. John is as equally enthusiastic about learning as he is about sharing knowledge. John is not afraid to ask questions, adapt and change, all while encouraging others to have the same insatiable curiosity.

Learning new skills started at the tender age of 6, when his grandfather taught him how to drive a tractor. He spent summers working on the farm and lending a hand after his grandmother had a stroke.

“Can you imagine … here I was, this little 6-year-old boy driving a tractor,” he recalls. “I couldn’t make any turns, but I could drive it in a straight row.”

Agriculture was an important part of his life, and he was eventually introduced to horticulture. His family built a small greenhouse — more like a lean-to — and John says once he started growing plants, he “was hooked.”

At age 13, John got a job at a small mom-and-pop garden center and floral shop in Tiffin, Ohio.

“I remember riding my bike to the shop every afternoon after school. The owners recognized the interest I had in growing plants, and they taught me how to grow annuals, cut flowers and everything related to greenhouse production,” he says.

In high school, the passion for plants remained. John started researching career paths and applied to several horticulture schools. He was not interested in following the medical career paths of his father (surgeon) or his mother (nurse).

John was accepted to Ohio State University, but he didn’t take the typical horticulture classes.

“I really wanted to be an interior plantscaper,” he explains. “But at the time — this was the late ’60s and early ’70s — there were very few interior plantscape companies. And there certainly weren’t any courses on it offered at Ohio State.”

“I realized there were a lot of unknowns with that career plan, so I jumped fully into studying greenhouse production,” he adds.

Just out of college, John landed his first job at Mercer Greenhouses in Mercer, Pennsylvania. It was a large wholesale operation, but it also had an interiorscape division. Not only did he get experience growing foliage plants at a grand scale, but he also helped do some large interiorscape installs at the U.S. Steel and Alcoa buildings in Pittsburgh.

“It was a cutting-edge greenhouse, and I was cutting my eye teeth and learning a heck of a lot,” he recalls.

A new venture

In 1977, during a trip to Rochester, Michigan, to spend Christmas with his sister, John walked into a retail greenhouse and was dazzled at the shopping experience. But he noticed something — they needed help with improving plant quality. So, he boldly applied for a job as a grower at Bordine’s, where he stayed for 18 years.

He wasn’t driving that childhood tractor in a straight line anymore. He was making turns that changed his life and the careers of many others.

John started as a grower, then became a manager and was eventually part of the strategic planning team charged with the regional chain’s future development.

“Ownership was fantastic,” he says. “They encouraged us to treat the operation as if it were our own.”

This proved to be a liberating and invaluable experience.

His time on the strategic planning team helped him realize his own life mission: the ability, the skill and the desire to help people achieve their potential.

It was the early ’80s, and Bordine’s hired a nursery owner to help grow the business. He’d already gone through his own strategic planning and had altered the course of his own operation. In an industry where people are willing to share ideas and strategies, this consultant was imparting his experiences.

“We were required to first read Stephen Covey’s ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,’ then write a personal mission statement and list our own growth strategies for the future,” John says. “And I thought, ‘I’m a horticulturist. What does this have to do with anything?’”

But after reading the book and thoughtfully finishing his assignments, it was John’s “aha” moment.

John says he realized his gift was helping people realize their potential and then achieve it.

“Whether that is helping a young kid find enjoyment in work, helping a seasoned grower find answers to production challenges, or whether it’s helping someone plant a rose and know what to do with it once it’s in the ground,” he says. “That experience was extremely instrumental in where I am now.”

After John retired, Noah Derohanian became the new director of product development at Proven Winners.

A profound pause and triumphant return

Since continual learning and development is part of John’s mantra, he told his bosses at Bordine’s that he was going to leave within five years.

He’d made a difference there, and it was time to learn something new.

John left horticulture and worked for a management consulting firm, helping attorneys, dry cleaners and veterinary clinics organize their business.

But he hadn’t completely given up horticulture. You could still find John speaking at OFA (now AmericanHort’s Cultivate) and various nursery conferences.

During his stint as a business consultant, the owners of a fledgling plant company called Proven Winners approached John with a job offer.

He turned them down.

“At the time, I didn’t have any horticultural clients, and I was doing something different,” he explains. “Getting back into horticulture just didn’t seem like the right fit.”

About a year and a half later, John had picked up some horticulture firms as clients, including a retail garden center and a couple of large manufacturing operations.

“By that time, I was hearing the name Proven Winners more and more,” he says.

John got another visit from the company’s owners.

“When they came back — and I truly didn’t expect them to come back — we spent a lot of time talking about their goals and what this job they were offering was all about. It was so different than anything I’d done before,” he says.

The persistence of the Proven Winners ownership team paid off. John became the company’s first employee, and he helped manage the fast-and-furious growth of the Proven Winners brand.

“At that time, I was the administrator for the organization. The easiest way to describe it was chief cook and bottle washer,” he says. “I did the financials, I did the marketing, the advertising, and I made the breeder contacts.

“And on top of that, I had three very independent owners that I had to help guide down the path I thought was right. And they were all busy with their own growth, too. In the early days, we were growing anywhere from 35% to 65% per year.”

John started traveling internationally and soaking up all the knowledge he could from the breeders.

“It was probably the best time in my life,” he says.

John’s focus was once again on education. He was all in — sharing knowledge with growers, retailers and consumers.

“He was a lifesaver. He helped take Proven Winners to the next level,” says Henry Huntington, one of the brand’s founders and co-owner of Pleasant View Gardens. “During the last 10 years of his career at Proven Winners, John was part of supply chain management, and he developed incredible relationships with all our unrooted cutting suppliers and even the government.”

During his tenure, John created impeccable standards and protocols for stock cleanliness and virus indexing. He was a member of the pilot program committee for the USDA’s Offshore Greenhouse Certification Program, which helped streamline the flow of certified clean unrooted cuttings into the U.S.

From the first Proven Winners employee to the director of product development, John has shared his knowledge and encouragement with every facet of the horticulture supply chain.

“John has always looked out for the entire industry, and that altruism is really inspiring,” says Kevin Hurd, vice president of product development at Proven Winners. “He has always been open and transparent and shared as much as he could without giving away trade secrets. And it’s that openness that allows the industry to continue to improve.”

John officially retired from Proven Winners in April 2025. During those 28 years with the company, John has held just about every role.

And he fondly and gratefully reminisces about how he had the opportunity to influence the horticultural buying public, bringing thrilling plants to market and helping consumers develop a love of gardening.

Watch a video of John from the Horticultural Industries Leadership Awards at Cultivate'25 here.

Kelli Rodda is editorial director of Greenhouse Management magazine. Contact her at krodda@gie.net.