Building a Show Garden: Bringing in the young guns: Terry Huang

One of my objectives ramping up to the show is assembling a team that reflected my mission in representing the next generation of avid gardeners. It’s so important in this industry to network and gain work experience wherever they arise. Jobs are very scarce so your skill set has to be broad. One of my installation and design leads for “The Lost Gardener” is a young man my former professor, Dr. Sarah Reichard, insisted that I meet. He was taking her plant indentification course and showed the interest and enthusiasm that Sarah saw in me when I took that course 10 years ago! Terence Huang and I shared a similar path as undergraduates at the University of Washington.

We had retail experience working at a nursery, took in any bits and pieces of cool plants we would attempt (and often succeed in) to grow on and propagate and sell and, of course, we made the botany greenhouse on campus like our second home with ongoing projects and volunteering our time when our schedules would allow.

Also coming from a culture that demanded so much that you excel at everything you do, he was able to pursue this strong interests in plants and capitalized on the various opportunities that allowed him to grow both as a horticulturist and as a person. He’s travelled to Iceland, interned at the Smithsonian, grew orchids in a lab in his native Taiwan, and now, he’s praying to the heavens that he gets an interview for a prestigious fellowship through the infamous Kew Gardens in the UK.

Terry admiring the details of a lovely fern at UBC Botanic Garden in Vancouver, B.C.

Terry has a natural eye for placement. His close connection and open understanding of nature allows him to effectively create compositions both in a garden setting and also on paper as he’s also a skilled illustrator.

For my display, not only is he is helping out with installation, writing out the labels for the plants, and creating the artwork for our brochure, his most important role is simply being a friend and sharing in a valuable experience that will take him wherever he wants to go in the plant world.

Check out Terry's blog here.

R