Enriching Education: Seed Your Future

Seed Your Future today announced the launch of its new free online Horticulture Careers Internship Search Tool to help students find internships across the broad diversity of the horticulture profession. This is the newest resource from Seed Your Future, a coalition of more than 200 partners — including horticulture companies, gardening organizations, schools, colleges, universities, public gardens, youth organizations, nonprofit organizations and individual advocates — united in their mission to promote horticulture and careers working with plants.

Finding enough qualified candidates for open positions is the number one issue of concern for employers across the horticulture and “green-collar” industry, according to research conducted by Seed Your Future. Critically, only 61% of the annual job openings across the industry are expected to be filled annually (Goecker, et al, 2015).

To help find solutions to this workforce gap, in 2019, Seed Your Future hosted a summit to explore nationwide strategies. Representatives from certification and training programs, colleges, universities and the industry joined together to develop strategies to create and execute solutions to this critical employment issue. Chaired by John Dole, Ph.D., of North Carolina State University and Mary Hockenberry Meyer, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota, the summit explored both promising practices and resource gaps.

The online tool, SeedYourFuture.org/internships is unique in both its inclusion of internships across the art, science, technology and business of plant careers; and in the three ways for site visitors to search for their future internship — by job category, by employer and by state. 

The Horticulture Careers Internship Search Tool is just the first of the new resources Seed Your Future plans to launch in 2020 as a direct result of the summit. 

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About Seed Your Future

Seed Your Future is a national movement to promote horticulture and inspire people to pursue careers working with plants. Supported by more than 200 partner organizations, we envision a U.S. where everyone understands and values the importance of plants and the people who work in the art, science, technology and business of horticulture. For information, visit us at SeedYourFuture.org.