Maryland Students Get Firsthand Look at Landscaping Industry

When Mike Welch was 10 years old, he started along a path that led him to pursue a career in landscaping.

The 17-year-old recalled a family friend storing a tractor in a shed on his family's 12-acre farm in Urbana, Md. In exchange, the friend would mow grass.

By the time he was 14, Welch was working with the friend, earning money helping keep the fields mowed. After he helped build a two-tier pond that took four months, Welch fell in love with landscaping.

"The more I did it, the more I started to enjoy it," he said. "It was so fulfilling to see how good it looked, I knew I wanted to be part of this."

Now he's a laborer for J&G Landscape and Design in Spencerville and attends horticulture classes at the Frederick County Career and Technology Center. He even runs his own small landscaping business -- All-In-One Outdoor Services.

Welch is one of 10 students from the technology center who attended a field trip to Harry Grove Stadium to see what it takes to landscape a baseball field.

The center's horticulture and nursery program gives high school students a combination of academic and practical experience in the landscaping industry.

Grove Teats, the owner of Alpine Services, the company working on the field, spoke to the students about personal integrity and how it affects workmanship.

Tractors buzzed by, while jackhammers dug irrigation trenches. The once-grass-covered field is a chocolate-colored stretch of dirt, criss-crossed by tire tracks.

Once the plumbing is finished, the field will be filled with about 6 inches of sand and then topped with blue grass sod. The job should be finished by the end of November.

"This trip was organized to give our budding horticulturists an opportunity to see what's involved with the development of a spectacular athletic field," said Carroll Shry, instructor of the landscaping and nursery management program at the technology center.

Students who complete the program earn eight credits toward a park management degree at Frederick Community College and qualify for five college hours at the University of Maryland Institute of Applied Agriculture in College Park.

"Mr. Shry really broadens your horizons and shows you all the careers related to landscaping," Mr. Welch said. "It's all the aspects of the field that you don't know about that really brings it to life."

Welch expects to enroll at the university to study landscape management and landscape architecture after he graduates. After college, he would like to continue to learn the trade hands-on with a landscaping company.

"The toughest thing for me right now is going out there and getting an estimate together that will be adequate for the job -- sometimes you find you over- or underestimate on materials," he said. "But you can't display that to the customers. You just have to bite the bullet, move on and keep hammering out the business side of things."