Douglas R. Fox
Associate Professor
Landscape Horticulture
90 Quaker Hill Road, Unity, ME 04988
(207) 948-3131 ext. 215 dfox@unity.edu
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Douglas R. FoxAssociate Professor
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Background and Interests
I have taught horticulture at Unity College for almost fourteen years, and I have operated a consulting practice during college breaks. Previous to teaching and consulting I worked in private and municipal horticulture. I have teaching and field experience in design, maintenance, tree and lawn care, and community forestry. At home, my family and I are avid gardeners, growing much of the produce necessary to feed our family of six. I am always looking to create and offer services at the cutting edge of landscape horticulture and have done so successfully in tree evaluation and inventory. Currently I am outlining a business plan for landscape horticulturists who want to offer vegetable garden, small orchard (including cider-making), and beekeeping services.
My passion is to work with students to turn the college landscape into a garden where nature and culture thrive together in a unique ecosystem.
Teaching Approach
Unity College is known for its hands-on, minds-on approach to teaching. My courses include a strong component of real or realistic experience, often through "service learning" or fictional scenarios that mimic real-world situations. In the beginning, middle and end of the landscape horticulture curriculum students meet with landowners, evaluate their sites, and prepare designs, reports, or grant proposals for them. As one example, students in one class pruned street trees that were planted by another class according to a design created by a third class that accompanied a successful grant proposal the students wrote that funded the project. These experiences are designed to serve one or both of the following goals: 1) to help me to assess my students' ability to synthesize, think critically about, and communicate horticultural concepts, and 2) to provide rich experiences on which to build class discussions and lectures. So what can students expect in my classes? Thinking about real problems, getting dirty in real soil, handling real plants, writing and speaking in professional formats.
The A.S. and B.S. in Landscape Horticulture at Unity College
As human society exerts an ever-greater influence on the natural world, horticulturists who are sensitive to environmental, aesthetic, and land-use issues serve an important and unique societal function. In the B.S. in Landscape Horticulture students study, develop, and practice ways to bring together nature and culture so that both may flourish.
Landscape horticulture has traditionally sought to create and maintain pleasing environments where we live, work and recreate. Shade, beauty, safety, and convenience continue to be central goals in the field and in these curricula. More recently, organic landscape maintenance, integration of food crops in the home and community landscape, energy conservation, reduction of pollution, and promotion of biodiversity have become goals of landscape horticulture.
Natural ecosystems exhibit a certain degree of self-sufficiency and stability. They do this through cycling matter, channeling and storing energy, and protecting diversity. Built-environment systems commonly require large amounts of fossil fuel energy, imported water, and high chemical use to maintain plant growth. Through observing natural processes and bringing principles from them into our work in the built environment we can work in partnership with nature.
People gravitate toward outdoor spaces that are well-designed and managed, and they avoid spaces which are not. Some landscape features that draw people are obvious: features that provide shade, privacy, something to observe or do, cushioned surfaces for recreation, fragrances or food. Other features such as a sense of enclosure, rhythm, or security are not as obvious but are just as important. All of these features can be deliberately created through careful planning. Our goal is to apply principles of sustainability and principles of aesthetics together in landscape planning and cultivation.
Recent Courses
For other courses in the horticulture degree programs, see here.
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Sustainable Landscape Horticulture Arboriculture Sustainable Landscape Horticulture Experience Landscape Design Studio Human Ecology |
Plant Health Care Plant Insects and Diseases Dendrology Soil Fertility |
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