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UMass Extension's Green School

Program Background

Green School poplar logo

UMass Extension’s Green School is a comprehensive 60+ hour certificate short course that offers fundamental horticultural training in a compact time frame. The program is designed for professional practitioners such as landscapers, lawn care providers, nursery operators, public and private grounds managers, arborists, professional gardeners, landscape and garden designers, industry sales and support professionals, and others in the green industries. Both experienced professionals as well as those aspiring to be will benefit from this course.

The curriculum, which emphasizes a systems-based approach to plant and land care, is based on current research and is built on a framework of Best Management Practices (BMPs) and Integrated Pest Management (IPM). The course is expressly designed to promote understanding of economically feasible and environmentally sound plant and land care practices, and the relation of those practices to the protection and preservation of natural resources and the health of non-target organisms. The primary learning objective is to communicate effective and efficient approaches for the production and maintenance of healthy, resilient, functional, and attractive managed landscapes with simultaneous emphasis on responsibility, sustainability, and environmental stewardship.

Green School has been successfully offered to the industry as a certificate short course since the early 1990’s, and more recently for UMass Amherst Stockbridge School of Agriculture academic credit. 

Green School is only offered every other year, and the course will not be offered again until Oct-Dec 2024. We expect to begin taking registrations for the next class in July 2024.

Click to expand the headings below for complete course information and registration instructions.

Questions?

E-mail jdl@umass.edu or call the UMass Extension Landscape, Nursery & Urban Forestry Program at (413) 545-0895.