Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Horticulture is the science, technology, and business involved in intensive plant cultivation for human
use. It is practiced from the individual level in a garden up to the
activities of a multinational corporation. It is very diverse in its
activities, incorporating plants for food (fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, culinary herbs) and non-food crops (flowers, trees and shrubs,
turf-grass, hops, medicinal herbs). It also includes related services
in plant conservation, landscape restoration, landscape and garden
design/construction/maintenance, horticultural therapy, and much more.
This range of food, medicinal, environmental, and social products and
services are all fundamental to developing and maintaining human health
and well-being.[1]
Horticulturists apply the knowledge, skills, and technologies used to
grow intensively produced plants for human food and non-food uses and
for personal or social needs. Their work involves plant propagation and
cultivation with the aim of improving plant growth, yields, quality,
nutritional value, and resistance to insects, diseases, and
environmental stresses. They work as gardeners, growers, therapists,
designers, and technical advisors in the food and non-food sectors of
horticulture.
Horticultural scientists focus on the research that underpins
horticultural knowledge, skills, technologies, education, and commerce.
Horticultural science encompasses all of the pure sciences –
mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, and biology – as well as
related sciences and technologies that underpin horticulture, such as
plant pathology, soil science, entomology, weed science, and many other
scientific disciplines. It also includes the social sciences, such as
education, commerce, marketing, healthcare and therapies that enhance
horticulture's contribution to society.
A gardener is a person that tends to a garden and is therefore a horticulturist. However, not all horticulturists are gardeners.
