We all know that the world is changing fast. This is evident in everyday life, in business, in industry, and in our personal lives. Almost every week we are offered new and more sophisticated technology to help us communicate or to perform common tasks. The horticulture industry too has not been exempt in this evolution; plant propagation, plant care, harvesting techniques, growing systems, the way we care for golf courses and parks and even our approach to home gardening, have all changed dramatically over recent decades. These changes will continue as new techniques and new technologies are formulated and introduced. If you want to have a career in horticulture, you must recognise the inevitability of these changes. To have a long and sustainable career, you need to be able to adapt to change, and to excel you need to embrace and take advantage of change.
To achieve this, your knowledge and skills in horticulture must be broad based. If you understand the fundamental skills needed—across all sectors of horticulture—you will be able to see opportunities as they arise and confidently move from one sector to another, throughout your career. As an example, anyone with underpinning knowledge of plant science and plant cultural practices: plant growth and identification, soil management, pruning and pest control and the associated technologies, will be able to work in landscaping for a few years, then move to turf management or nursery production and later work in crop production. Sound, broad-based training in the fundamentals of horticulture is a good starting point for entering this industry. However, not all courses on offer will be broad enough or in-depth enough to set you up for a sustainable, lifelong career—so you need to understand the fundamentals required in horticulture (in general) and then choose a diverse course, that enables you to achieve these aims.