NYBG Landscape Design student Danielle Faustini is on a crazy mission.
Last week, she started working at a Manhattan landscape design firm, while completing freelance projects and wrapping up her education in The New York Botanical Garden’s Certificate Program in anticipation of graduation on June 7.
Faustini’s education started in last summer’s Landscape Design Summer Intensive, an expedited five-week program that covers half of all required classroom hours toward a prestigious NYBG Certificate. In one year, she finished the required 350 hours, while working full-time as a server in a restaurant and doing freelance design work on the side—hence the crazy.
“Life is short, you know?” Faustini said. “I told myself I would complete the Certificate Program within a year. It definitely wasn’t easy, but you set your mind to something, and you do it.”
Landscape Design students, Danielle Faustini and George Siriotis
Faustini and her Summer Intensive classmate George Siriotis, who also completed the Certificate Program in a year, saw the Intensive as an opportunity to jump into a new career with the support of like-minded, ambitious peers and industry-professional instructors.
Instructor Daryl Beyers demonstrates how to resolve bound roots during a container gardening lesson.
On July 14, more than 60 eager Summer Intensives students came to the Garden to begin a move toward changing their careers, learning new skills, and pursuing their passions. The Intensives are designed to accelerate training and Certification in Gardening, Floral Design, Landscape Design, Botanical Art & Illustration, and Horticultural Therapy.
Students came from as near as the tri-state area and as far as Texas to get professional training from the Garden. Some students had prior experience in these fields of study, while others were newcomers looking for a new career. This year’s students were, overwhelmingly, all on a mission to positively change their lives and the lives of others.
While living in Kyoto, Japan as a college student, Jan Johnsen first experienced the “restorative powers” of gardens. “On the weekends I went to visit the serene landscapes of that city and they opened my eyes to the sublime loveliness that could be created in a small plot of ground within an urban environment,” she said.
Johnsen, who will be teaching in the Landscape Design Summer Intensive this July, started out as an intern at a high-pressure architecture firm in Japan, but her frequent visits to Kyoto’s treasured gardens changed her life, leading her to work in a landscape architecture office in Osaka. She next studied landscape architecture at the University of Hawaii and years later earned a graduate degree in planning. Today, her serene landscape designs clearly show the influence of Asian culture and thought.
