A well-known instructor at the University of Maryland’s Institute of Applied Agriculture, Kenny Ingram, can be heard many times throughout the year professing “You never know where your career is going to take you.” Words have not rang truer for IAA student intern Brandon Carbary. Carbary, a non-traditional student, decided to switch careers to a horticultural path after brief stints in the logistics, retail, and restaurant industries.
In 2018, Carbary took a position as a Lead Groundskeeper for the University’s Arboretum and Botanical Garden department and enrolled in the Ornamental Horticulture Program at the IAA. Carbary's abilities and accomplishments throughout his time at the University propelled him to create a landscape company in the Spring of 2022 and was the source of his internship experience this past summer.
Even though Carbary's business officially began in February 2022, things were a little slow to start. In gaining business, Grateful Gardening uses lead-generating services such as Angi-leads, Porch, and Nextdoor to find clients in its service area of Northwest DC. Once a client selects the services they are looking for, Carbary will get an alert on his phone to respond to the client and set up a date and time for an estimate. After the initial meeting with a client, Carbary will walk the property to identify any issues or concerns that may have been missed on the initial walk-through and collect all data pertaining to any design work.
Once data and field measurements have been collected, the property is transposed into computer software that allows Carbary and the clients to virtually look at the property. “The design software is a lot like playing a landscaping video game, not only does it help my team accurately dial in material estimates, it allows myself and the customer to gain a solid vision of what we’re dreaming up”. Carbary typically creates three designs for each customer to critique and from those three choices, a final concept is created and presented to the client.
Some of the challenges that were faced during the internship were blocking out time for organizational work as well as scheduling maintenance clients around installation projects. Drawing from his electoral coursework in golf course management, Carbary “found it helpful to schedule our workloads much in the way maintenance tasks are scheduled on a golf course." When faced with obstacles and unforeseen circumstances, Carbary has found much confidence in the connections he has made within the university network and never hesitates to reach out for advice.
In reflecting on his unique experience, Carbary says his most memorable moment of the year was winning a 300 ft fencing installation project and flawlessly executing the build even though he and his team have never built a fence! “A very notable figure in the horticultural industry told me her husband took the same path that I am on, 30 years later they have built the life of their dreams and told me to stick with the business” His internship proved he has a working product and Carbary continues his business today.
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