My name is Hunter Park and I’m from Kensington, Maryland. My major is ornamental horticulture, and my preferred pronouns are he/him. Over the course of the summer, I worked here on campus at UMD’s arboretum, which is a botanical garden dedicated to trees and other woody plants.
The arboretum is a government-funded organization that encompasses the entirety of UMD’s campus, which is over one thousand acres! With the arboretum being so massive, there are over two hundred grounds workers helping to maintain the campus's appearance. I worked as a tree inventory intern, which is someone who records all of the tree's heights, trunk diameters, and canopy diameters. The arboretum has an online data page where you can see all of the tree data I inputted. The data page is massive, with over sixteen thousand dots each representing a tree or bush. You can log online now and every individual dot will contain the plant's scientific name, date planted, and other dimensional data. Each day my boss would select a section of the dots, and it was my job to go and identify and record the heights of the trees in that section. I would use a laser measuring tool and tree measuring tape to record all of my data. Most days were very similar with me just recording and identifying, but I started to see it like a fun puzzle with me learning how to identify common Maryland trees and other landscape plants.
My favorite part of the job was the flexibility of the hours and the ability to get paid for walking around in nature. The most interesting thing that happened at work was when my boss asked me to cut and dry around three hundred garlic plants while picking out moldy pieces. It was definitely a switch-up from recording trees. This internship has definitely made me consider working more with plants, but more with disease. Walking around campus this summer I saw so much disease on plants and it fascinated me. As a child, I always thought plants lived forever, until last year when I took a class on plant diseases and learned how susceptible plants are to dying. Seeing disease specimens up close every day at work made me interested in pursuing disease diagnostics. I'm very intrigued by how diseases spread and could see myself working in a scientific environment.
A quote from my supervisor I liked was “Take your time, it’s better to get the correct identification than to rush”. My supervisor Richard was exceptional and was always there any time I had concerns or questions about data entry or tree identification. He frequently would warn me about heat advisories and instruct me to take breaks as I needed. I always appreciated Richard's relaxed demeanor and compassion towards his employees. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed my internship and learned a lot of fundamental skills like tree identification and data entry that I can use in my future agricultural career. I appreciate my time working for the UMD arboretum and will likely pursue a career in disease diagnostics because of my positive experiences.
