University Of Florida Horticulture Professor Attracts New Students By Giving Them Plants He Has Bred
December 14, 2015 
David Clark, Marvin Miller, market research manager for Ball Horticultural Company, Anna Ball, Kendall Stacey, and Sandra Wilson, chair of the UFIFAS Department of Environmental Horticulture
University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Professor David Clark has figured out how to entice students to his horticulture class: He gives away a plant that he bred. Recently, he donated his 40,000th plant to an undergraduate psychology student.
For the ceremony, Clark, a professor in the Department of Environmental Horticulture, brought Anna Ball, a third-generation owner of Ball Horticultural Company, as a special guest lecturer on October 22. Ball is one of three companies that licenses Clark’s UF coleus varieties.
Ball gave a UF/IFAS coleus plant — in this case a ‘Wasabi’ bred by Clark and licensed by the Ball Horticultural Company — to undergraduate student Kendall Stacey, a freshman psychology major. Stacey works with Clark’s new UF/IFAS Plant Innovation Center undergraduate science writing team. Clark is the director of the center.
“I have learned so much about plants and keeping them alive. My tomato plant is full of fruit. I’m growing an orange tree as we speak, and I have two thriving banana plants,” Stacey says. “I will definitely be growing more plants, and I’ve come to be able to recognize and identify plants that I see around campus.”
Ball made the presentation during Clark’s ORH 1030 class — Plants, Gardening and You — an introductory environmental horticulture course open to any major. The class, a one-credit elective, is taken by students from every major on campus.
Clark started teaching the class in 2007 to help the Environmental Horticulture Department attract students into plant science. Clark says when he first started teaching the course, he came up with three ideas: charge a small lab fee and solicit plant and seed donations to give away plants at every class, give credit for attendance and give extra credit for bringing a friend to class.
“The idea to make ‘Gator Glory’ coleus, and the name for that plant, came from this class,” Clark says. “The plant we gave away is special to me because it was the first plant that my son, Grayson, co-invented with me.”
Clark’s son is a senior in the UF/IFAS Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition and is on the U.S. Plant Patent for the ‘Wasabi’ plant given to Stacey. He is also a co-inventor for the ‘Gator Glory’ coleus plants displayed on the commencement stage each graduation and given out by the UF president at special events.
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