Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century

Holland Hort Tour Dubbed 'Incredible'

Sometimes, an experience is so awesome, you just can't find the words to do it justice. That's how AU horticulture senior Matt Wilson feels about the Henry P. Orr Endowment horticultural study tour to Holland.

"It was incredible, absolutely incredible," Wilson says. And if the hundreds of photos that he, his six fellow student travelers and faculty adviser Joe Eakes took to document the journey are any indication, incredible is an understatement.

"It was a very diverse trip in terms of what we saw," Eakes says. "Every single stop we made was a good one."

The 10-day trip in May 2006 took students to several private gardens as well as a number of well-known sites, including Aalsmeer, the world's largest flower auction; Boskoop, the nursery center of Holland; the Keukenhof Exhibition, a world-renowned 70-acre display garden that is the world's largest exhibition of blooming tulips, daffodils and hyacinths; and the Hortus Bulborum, an open-air living museum that is home to many species of rare bulbs.

"We got to see the whole scope of flower and bulb production—from the seed to the nursery production all the way to the market," Wilson says.

The Henry P. Orr Endowed Fund for Horticultural Excellence was established in 2000 by the AU Department of Horticulture and a group of former horticulture students who studied under the late Orr.

Orr, who taught at AU from 1947 until his retirement in 1981, was a noted horticulturist who worked with many facets of the industry—from landscaping and plant identification to greenhouse design. However, his signature service to students, and the reason many of his former students credit him for their successes, was his insistence that classroom education be augmented with real-world experience in the industry.

The endowment was established to support undergraduate education outside the classroom by funding events such as an international study tour.