"Dirty Hands" Add to MSU Senior's Resume

03/07/01 BOZEMAN - Getting your hands dirty is one of the prerequisites for a job in landscape design, says Kelly Holden of Reedpoint. So far, her class projects and summer jobs have netted her enough "dirty hands" to get three job offers, making her one happy Montana State University senior.

 Kelly Holden 

            It was after her sophomore year at MSU that she decided to study horticulture with an emphasis in landscape design.

            "I decided that since I always loved plants, I would do something with that," which led her to horticulture. Within horticulture, landscape design seemed to offer the best match.

            "I love to be creative and work with plants, and this puts it all together. It's been awesome," says Holden. She says majoring in landscape planning means you study a bit of everything, from design, construction, irrigation, and architecture to greenhouse and nursery problems and plant propagation. (Sound file with quote from Holden.)

          It's "pretty easy to get started" in landscape work, she says. She worked for Wildwood Nursery in Big Sky last year to get experience with plants, fulfilling one of the most basic tenets of her field: "You can't design until you get your hands dirty."

            She's also gotten practical and unusual experiences during her classes, including helping with a landscape design for the Beartooth Nature Center in Red Lodge, with a student team that included Toby Day and Adam Shaw-Doran, both of Bozeman. The students researched and developed habitat plans for the Nature Center's wild animals and designed plantings for the grounds.

            Ruth Brown of the center says its animals now include several mountain lions, pronghorn antelope, moose, elk, deer, wolves, bobcats, raccoon, black bears and birds -- all dropped off by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

            "They've all been injured and can't return to the wild," says Brown.

            "The Nature Center was a challenge," says Holden, "because it was built on the old city dump and coal slag depository. We only had about six inches of top soil before we reached the trash. The challenge was to revegetate the site and also make it look appealing."

            Brown says the Nature Center "got exactly what we needed, and much more than we expected" from the students. Landscaping according to those plans will be installed this spring, if Brown can get a donor or a grant to pay for the work.

Student Design for
Beartooth Nature Center

            Holden says her favorite class was, as might be expected, the one that brought all these elements together -- landscape architecture. An assignment for that class was for each student to design improvements for a courtyard between MSU's Plant Growth Center and new Ag Bioscience Facility on the northwest end of campus. Holden's design was chosen to be implemented. Now that her basic design has been selected, she is using computer-aided design tools like Autocad, Landcad and Visual Landscaping to refine and complete the design.

            "One of my pet peeves on campus is that there aren't enough places to sit outside to study and have lunch or just enjoy the weather, unless you like sitting on cold concrete steps. We need some little spots for kids to study or hang out," Holden says, so her design included picnic tables and other amenities.

            All the class projects have given Holden the experience she needs to start designing professionally. She is particularly interested in landscaping with native plants. Holden has lived near Big Sky for the past five years and expects to work there after she graduates. Eventually, she says she will either need to get enough design work to keep her busy here over the winter or alternate summers here with winters where landscaping has a longer season.

Send questions or comments to Carol Flaherty, MSU Communications Services, Bozeman, MT 59717: carolf@montana.edu.

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