5 Minutes With … Ron Vanderhoff
Ron Vanderhoff is vice president of Roger’s Gardens, where he has worked in management capacities for 26 years. He is also a director of the California Native Plant Society, president of Calflora.org (a California principal plant mapping, distribution and information platform) and a scientific contributor to the California Invasive Plant Council.
How did you become involved in horticulture?
I grew up in Southern California at a time before cell phones, social media and YouTube. As a child my entertainment was playing outside, usually in our yard. I began to notice the bugs, birds, worms, lizards, mushrooms and butterflies that were sharing the space with me. I also noticed the flowers and plants that they were associating with those bugs, birds, worms, lizards, mushrooms and butterflies. Over time, I learned the names of many of them and how to tell one from the other. As I became interested in the plants, I became interested in growing them and cultivating them and also noticing the insects and birds that would accompany them.
I began collecting, growing and learning about a large array of different plant groups that interested me. In college, I studied both horticulture and landscape architecture. One of my first jobs was as a junior landscape draftsman, plotting lines on paper and creating plans for somewhat distant gardens and landscapes. But, for me, those were not gardens and landscapes, they were representations of gardens and landscapes. From my second-story work desk I could see out the window to the trees and the flowers and the people — and the nature that was my real attraction.
So, fresh out of school, I walked into my neighborhood independent garden center and asked if I could work there. At $2.25 an hour I had started my “career” in horticulture. Three years later, I became general manager of that two-store nursery operation and have been a retail garden center manager ever since. It is the greatest profession in the world.
What do you love about your job?
Yes, it is the greatest, and most rewarding, profession in the world. Horticulture is all about promoting beauty and nature bringing nature closer. Woking with living plants in fresh air and in a healthy environment is obvious. But the aspect I love most is what we all are really doing in horticulture – connecting people to the natural world. What could be more satisfying and worthwhile? If we do it right, our businesses are creating and supporting natural beauty and a healthier planet.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Surround yourself with people smarter than you. I enjoy learning, which is best done from people that know more than I do. That can be intimidating, but it can also be exhilarating. Fortunately, there is usually an abundant supply of those people all around us if we are willing to listen to them and learn from them. A funny thing happens when you surround yourself with people smarter than yourself — over time, you become that smarter person.
Favorite plant to grow? Why?
I have a new favorite every week, which is likely true for many of us. But over the past couple of years, I would have to say milkweed is a favorite — not for its horticultural assets, but for what it is doing. Likely, no other group of plants have had as much impact of connecting people to nature and the planet. The connection between native milkweeds, monarch butterfly recovery and gardeners has helped shape how we care for our lands and the plant decisions that we make. And the milkweeds-and-monarchs example, especially when shown to a child, can make a lifelong and lasting impression. Even a single milkweed added to an urban garden — and a monarch visiting it — can change someone’s total relationship with nature. Perhaps this will lead to further curiosity and further good decisions.
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