Academic Offerings
Are you interested in helping create a local and global food source that is sustainable and secure? Do you want to create beautiful outdoor living spaces that improve people’s quality of life? Are you passionate about maintaining the best possible playing surface for golfers, soccer players, and baseball players? You can explore all of these career possibilities, and others, as a student in the Department of Horticulture.
We offer a degree program leading to a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture, with a choice to specialize in one of six options:
- Horticulture Food Crop Production and Management
- Landscape Design, Installation, and Management
- Greenhouse Plant Production
- Public Horticulture
- Horticulture Research
- Turfgrass Management
Our expert faculty will teach you the skills to gather and analyze information and then engage you in addressing current, real-world issues and decisions faced by professional horticulturists. In our courses, you will participate in active-learning, hands-on laboratory experiences, and field based landscape construction and management projects. You will also experience Iowa’s horticulture industries firsthand through course field trips to greenhouses, farms and vineyards, golf courses, sports fields, and landscape construction and management firms. Your classroom learning experiences will be enhanced further through our nearby Horticulture Research Farm, and state-of-the art greenhouses.
As a graduate of our program you will develop the technical knowledge and skills necessary to be a successful, professional horticulturist. With a consistent 98% job placement within six months of graduation, ISU horticulture graduates are our future fruit and vegetable producers, golf courses and sports fields managers, lawn care professionals, nursery producers and garden center managers, landscape design and installation professionals, public garden horticulturists and educators, garden writers and communication professionals, and environmental specialists.
