I grew up in a small town in East Texas, surrounded by loblolly pine forests, red-clay rivers, and the persistent humidity of the Gulf Coast region. Early on, I earned pocket money mowing lawns and maintaining garden beds, but one client had an outsized influence on my trajectory. Miss Trixie, an avid gardener with limited mobility, guided me through the fundamentals of plant care including pruning, planting, fertilizing, and problem diagnosis. In doing so, she nurtured in me a deep and lasting interest in horticulture.

That interest led me to Texas A&M University, where I completed a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture while working in a rose and peach breeding program. The experience grounded me in applied research and introduced me to the land-grant mission of service, research, and education. It also sparked an appreciation for extension work and its role in improving agricultural practices at scale. It was during this time that I met my future wife. We were both student workers in the breeding program, and our shared academic interests quickly became a personal partnership.

After graduation, I pursued graduate training through Oklahoma State University’s Masters International program combined with service in the United States Peace Corps. My wife and I spent two years in a remote rainforest community in Panama near the Colombian border, where we supported home gardening initiatives and collaborated on clean water projects. Despite challenges related to isolation, limited infrastructure, and tropical disease, the work was meaningful and transformative. Helping families produce their first successful vegetable harvests remains one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

Upon returning to the United States, I joined Texas A&M’s Extension and Research program and worked on an irrigation trial for dent corn in the high-desert climate of Arizona. Later, a family health concern brought us back to East Texas, where I spent five years teaching high school biology and environmental science. During that time, my wife and I also undertook the long process of building our own home. Once that chapter was complete, we felt ready for a new professional challenge.

In 2019, we relocated to the Pacific Northwest, where I joined the team at the North Willamette Research and Extension Center. Living and working in the Willamette Valley has been professionally invigorating. The region’s soils, climate, and grower community provide an exceptional environment for applied horticultural research. My responsibility varies from day to day, including developing and installing research trials, supporting grower education, refining irrigation and production techniques, and deepening my work with novel and specialty crops. I am especially interested in studying plant physiological responses to abiotic stress and environmental variability. For example, my recent publication on greenhouse production of wasabi, Eutrema japonicum, offers insight into environmental and cultural parameters for this challenging specialty crop (Taylor et al. 2025). https://journals.ashs.org/view/journals/hortsci/60/11/article-p2094.xml

I continue to find opportunities to expand my technical expertise and to contribute meaningfully to the nursery and greenhouse industry in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.