Horticulture at Cabrillo College

During my trip to the Santa Cruz area I visited the Horticulture Program at Cabrillo College and met with the Program Chair Peter Shaw. Since Peter was still teaching when I arrived I toured the facilities by myself and was just blown away. Horticulture has its own little kingdom on the upper campus overlooking the Monterrey Bay. The first building I encountered was the Environmental Horticulture Center Community Building which "houses a spacious lobby, community room, lecture classroom, faculty offices, a learning center/library and site of the future garden store." For hands-on teaching they have a Nursery center with state-of-the-art greenhouses, shade structures, hoop houses and a number of gardens. In the greenhouses I found various plant collections, which I later learned are some of the best in the world. Four beautifully designed botanic gardens are around the community and the nursery centers.

The program is also well staffed. Several full time and part time faculty supported by 2 teaching assistants, a nursery and garden curator and 8 student assistant teach about 150-200 individual students who take horticulture, crops and soils classes each semester. The program is financially well supported by the college but in addition to a normal operating budget they also have number of fundraising activities, which allows them to maintain and expand the facilities and create new learning opportunities.

Their Mother's day plant sale is a 3-day event grossing over $110,000!!!! (LBCC's is a $2000 event). A smaller poinsettia sale on Christmas gives them another few thousand dollars in their operating budget. They also run community lecture series each semester charging $40 for five lectures. This semester's topic is "Permaculture Design for Suburban Landscapes". In addition, they support their program with produce sale from their newly installed, organically certified market garden. Produce is sold to the college food service at whole sale prices but more profitably to a delicatessen store and at their own garden store. Soon community members and college staff will be able to check online what they have for sale.

This was quiet an amazing visit and I came back with many ideas I will implement over time at LBCC. In the short term, I can certainly see starting a volunteer program and a lecture series. I also feel that we could expand our produce sale to the community and run a larger plant sale once we have more greenhouse space.

I am looking forward to my next trip to the Ecological Agriculture Program and the Center for Ecological Living and Learning at Evergreen College.