How Bland Landscaping turned a farm into a horticulture learning hub

Editor's note: This story is part of Lawn & Landscape's "Back to School" series that culminates with the debut of our newest cover story September 10. 

Bland Landscaping is providing more than just horticulture students with the chance to better themselves.

It’s all through a property the company maintains, which Kurt Bland, Bland Landscaping’s president, thinks is truly unique.

“We operate a teaching farm for one of our customers who is a philanthropist,” Bland notes. “He provides us with the land and the resources to operate this teaching farm. At the teaching farm, we bring in students throughout the year to expose them to horticulture and agriculture. We bring in 40 to 50 classroom groups per year.”

The area is called Burkett Farm and Bland says his business has been involved with it for over a decade now.

“About 13 years ago, one of our clients asked us to take care of a private estate that they owned,” Bland says. “It used to be a farm, and they wanted us to start farming it. So, we started farming the land for them and donating all of the food. Our staff runs it for them. They then said that we should build an education center out here.

“This teaching facility is made out of shipping containers,” he adds. “It is truly a world-class, one-of-a-kind place. Its sole purpose is to promote sustainability, agriculture and horticulture.”

© Bland Landscaping

Instead of having to hunt down teachers or programs for the opportunities to work with students — now, Bland says those programs, throughout the state of North Carolina, are coming to him.

“We’ve been successful enough out there over the past 10 years that we can build relationships with the high schools and recently the head of CTE (career technical education) for the public schools brought their entire leadership team to Burkett Farm to see it,” he says. “They realize what an outreach opportunity it is. We have educators reaching out to us asking if they can engage with us more. Because it really fits the sustainability curriculums that they’re working into high schools and colleges nowadays.”

Bland says the company hosts numerous classroom field trips along with more detailed education sessions on particular topics at the college, or technical school, level.

“Their HVAC department is interested in showing students how our off-the-gird cooling system works, their electrical departments interested as well… their culinary department is interested in showing their students how the food grows and gets harvested…” he says. “We’ve got a connection through the farm to a lot of different disciplines now.”