Photos courtesy of Gabriella Blair
Gabriella Blair’s journey into horticulture was anything but linear. Initially, she entered college to pursue a career as an addiction counselor before realizing it wasn’t the right fit. As part of her biology coursework, she wound up in a botany class that piqued her interest in plants.
"From there, it just snowballed into something that I really wanted to do,” says Blair, who ultimately landed a job as an assistant scientist at Star Roses and Plants in Pennsylvania.
But her trip across the country and into the lab took several more detours along the way. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest gave her a deep appreciation for the region’s rich biodiversity, from rainforests to mountain ranges. As she trekked east in search of her career, she discovered how much more botanical diversity awaited.
“Each ecosystem around the U.S. is drastically different, so there’s always more to learn about new plants,” she says.
To learn more about potential horticulture jobs, she reached out to her uncle, who worked at a potato gene bank in Wisconsin. He offered her a glimpse into plant research and put her in contact with a professor who ended up becoming her adviser while she earned her bachelor’s degree in horticulture.
Entering the field, Blair encountered a wide-open frontier of opportunity.
“I tried so many internships to figure out what I wanted to do within this industry,” she says. “I knew I wanted to work with plants, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with plants.”
Along the way, she explored various internships at a wholesale tree nursery and public and private gardens across the country as she narrowed her focus. She ended up at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania as a research intern, solidifying her decision to pursue lab work. From there, she pursued a research internship at Star Roses and Plants, leading to a full-time position there in 2020.
“I enjoy working in the lab a lot,” she says. “There are always going to be more questions that need to be answered, and in order to do that, we have to do the research.”
In her role, Blair primarily works with roses, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries.
Tending the plant pipeline
In her role, Blair primarily works with roses, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries.
“I work on bringing roses into tissue culture to help the pipeline of roses that need to go to different locations in the trial process,” she says. “Tissue culture is becoming increasingly important because of restrictions other countries have for virus testing and whether they want dormant, active or bareroot plants.”
One of the biggest misconceptions Blair has encountered in her work is the lack of understanding about how long plant research actually takes.
“You’re trying to figure out how to make a plant grow and trial what zones it’s going to thrive in, and then you have the marketing and the sales. It can take years, even half a decade, to accomplish, but people want them as fast as possible,” she says. “It takes a lot longer than people realize.”
With that in mind, one of Blair’s priorities is unlocking new efficiencies to make her part of the process as smooth as possible.
Leveraging the network
Although Blair works in a Star Roses and Plants lab, she’s an employee of the Ball Horticultural Company. That means she’s connected to an international network of horticulturists.
“We have a lot of communication between all of the labs to compare notes,” she says. “Even though new techniques might not work for every plant, we’re trying to utilize what other labs are using, and that’s how our lab has become more efficient.”
Every few years, for example, the company holds a conference to bring together scientists from all the labs to “showcase what they’ve learned or projects they’re working on,” Blair says. Plus, similar departments across the company meet monthly to share solutions to common problems.
Compared to some breeders she met during college, who preferred to work alone, Blair is encountering more horticulturists in her generation who are “always willing to collaborate,” she says. “People are more willing to share, and that might be because it’s easier to communicate with email or face-to-face on Zoom. Technology has really helped us in that aspect.”
Sharing advice
For other aspiring plant lovers looking for their place in this field, Blair’s advice is to explore all the possibilities. Whether seeking new heights in arboriculture by climbing trees, getting dirty in the greenhouse focusing on production or working in a research lab like her, “there’s a lot of diversity, and there are a lot of plants that are each special in their own way,” she says. “There’s a lot of opportunity.”
Blair also credits the wide range of internships that helped to hone her focus.
“I ended up doing something completely different,” she says, “but I never would’ve known it was an opportunity if I hadn’t kept on trying.”
This article appeared in the March 2025 issue of Greenhouse Management magazine under the headline "Finding a path to plants."
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