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Ernesto Sandoval

Ernesto Sandoval, Director of the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory, gets to work with his passion for plants and people in a combination that suits him quite well. Every quarter he has new interns and has been honing his skills at communicating the plant world to novices and those wanting to better understand how why plants grow and react the way that they do using minimal scientific words and lots of analogies to relate the people and the plant worlds to each other. Ernesto grew up in the fast paced "Mow, Blow, and Go!" landscaping business of his father and other close relatives and can boast of mowing a lawn non-stop for an hour on a weekly basis, a rare thing these days with the smaller yards of present day. Fast forward to his interest in Biology taking him to UC Davis for that major and particularly a tour his Freshman year at the Conservatory and the rests is just a little more history for context. From that tour he found something he could be passionate about and unbeknownst to him he'd prepared for such a thing all his working life. At and because of the Conservatory he discovered plants beyond turf grass and foundation plants, especially succulents and drought tolerant plants including natives. When friends found out he had switched to Botany and had become a planthead of sorts, plant names to him are like people names (both easy to remember), they kept assuming his yard looked great. To fill that void and his skills at growing plants outside of the pot intensive Conservatory plants he started doing much more in ground growing in his garden and the lawns and weedy grass patches were the first to go! He even has fun doing that for others in his "spare" time. He'll share more of this story in the context of helping us all better understand the inner and outer workings of plants that he's been so glad to have learned by studying plants and doing horticulture under a variety of situations. Ernesto Sandoval, Director College Of Biological Sciences Greenhouses University of California Davis Department of Plant Biology 1002 Life Sciences Davis, California 95616-8537

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