Rotation Descriptions
Students are engaged in eight horticulture work rotations
during the first year for hands-on
experience. The following chart depicts the rotation areas with complementary
course work
(not necessarily taken in conjunction with work rotation). Each rotation
is approximately
125 to 140 hours long.
| Area/Section | Skills Learned and Utilized | Location |
| Arboriculture | Safe, appropriate methods to climb trees for maintenance purposes. Trimming large hedges using platforms. Pruning techniques. | Throughout the Garden grounds |
| Display Gardens | How to plant for display purposes–spacing, grooming, weeding, watering, edging and staking. | Home Gardening Center Everett Children’s Adventure Garden Perennial Garden Beds and Borders |
| Bronx Green-Up | Community outreach and involvement, improvement of community gardens, and putting into practice horticultural skills. | Throughout the Bronx |
| Family Garden | Learn how to plan, install, maintain gardens, growing vegetables, cut flowers, perennials, meadow/wild flowers, containers, working with volunteers and families. | Family Garden |
| Conservatory | How to plant for indoor display purposes. Maintenance of conservatory plants: grooming, watering, syringing, misting, soil preparation and amending. Specific culture for succulents and cacti, aquatics, tropicals and/or others. | Enid A. Haupt Conservatory |
| Turfs and Grounds | Learn how to maintain turf areas: irrigation methods, edging techniques, fertilizing (equipment and type of fertilizer), weed control, leaf-raking and blowing. | Throughout the Garden grounds |
| Rose Culture | Learn how to maintain a rose collection: grooming, hilling, watering, deadheading, winter pruning, overwintering, pruning for different types of roses. | Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden |
| Integrated Pest Management |
How to identify common pests in display areas by understanding how pests behave in different environmental conditions. Students will be taught how to scout for target pests. | Throughout the Garden grounds, Enid
A. Haupt Conservatory, and Nolen Greenhouses |
| Greenhouse Production | Control systems: heating, cooling, humidity control, shade control and ventilation. Do basic operations: fertilizing, soil mixture preparations, repotting plants, pricking, transplanting. Learn crop production: forcing, growing annuals, and container growing. | Nolen Greenhouses |
| Plant Records and Mapping |
Plant identification, mapping and
map reading, data entry, label design and production, accessioning
and de-accessioning, taking inventory of collections, label information for shows, research and composition. |
Plant Records and Institutional Mapping Department |
| Alpine and Native Plant Culture | Cultivation of rock and native plants that require very specific conditions. | Rock and Native Plant Garden |
Tests: Students are evaluated on their mastery of horticulture utilized, e.g., propagating woody plants, pruning shrubs, calculating fertilizer rates, etc., at the end of each work rotation.