Horticulture classes promise a fun experience and the gain of real-life skills Horticulture finds a stable position in today’s unstable job market and suddenly the major looks much more enticing to ARC students.

Many crazy things have been seen on American River College’s campus and these days you can see students running around with nets catching bugs.
Horticulture is the art, science, and business of growing plants involving many different industries and skills. It is a type of agriculture that takes human input,or in other words, hands-on work; something that students taking these classes know well.

In horticulture class students typically test soil, plant seeds and get his or her hands dirty. They are taught how to properly plant and grow seeds to their maturity, use equipment such as tractors and rototillers, tend to gardens, control pests, and fertilize.

One part of the horticulture class is to go out on campus and use nets to catch all different types of bugs. After collecting the bugs, students put them onto pins, identify the type of bug and put it in a case for protection.

Deborah Flower is one of the professors at ARC that teaches horticulture classes to interested students. According to Flower, a lot of people are interested in this field and with all three of her classes at capacity, with 55 students in each, the numbers are showing.