The AHTA requires 12 semester hours and a minimum of four courses from the following topics:

• Introduction to Horticulture
• Plant Materials
• General Plant Pathology
• Pest and Disease Management
• Plant Propagation
• Floral Design
• Greenhouse or Nursery Production/Management
• Landscape Design
• Entomology

Online horticulture courses are popping up right and left. I'm currently looking for a good plant pathology course for next spring.  I haven't run any of these by the AHTA board yet, but from what I can tell they would all be credit bearing. So far I have found the following:

Fundamentals of Plant Pathology: a distance education course every Fall semester (late August – December) at the University of Florida. Contact Michael Sisk at mjsisk@ufl.edu

Plant Pathology: Auburn University offered on-line every May.  Contact Kathy S. Lawrence, Ph.D. lawrekk@auburn.edu for more info.

Plant Pathology: University of Georgia, distance learning course.  Contact Cookie Smith, General Advisor, IDL Georgia Center for Continuing Education, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, cookie.smith@georgiacenter.uga.edu, 706-583-8206, 1-800-877-3243

Other courses:

Penn State offers Horticultural Science in spring and fall online.

Iowa State offers 1 credit courses in Topics in Horticulture courses including: Greenhouse Crops (Houseplants), Nursery Crops (Herbaceous Perennials), Nursery Crops (Annual Garden Flowers), Vegetable Crops, and Introduction to Horticulture.  Each costs $212 plus $50 delivery fee.  This list was as of 2006.  For more info contact:

Southwest Iowa Regents Resource Center

3501 Harry Langdon Blvd

ISD Campus, Careers Bldg

Council Bluffs, Iowa 51503

Phone: 712‐366‐3647

Fax: 712‐366‐1723

E‐mail: swirrc@iastate.edu

Warning! Courses offered by ACS Distance Education. 

4-6-2009  ACS Distance Education is not accredited and will not meet AHTA's requirements.  Too bad, because the course I started was great!

I have found another on-line source for horticulture classes: Texas Tech Horticulture Program. They are certainly accredited.  I'm taking two courses starting at the end of May and will post here on how that goes.  They only teach on-line courses in a two-year rotation, so if you want to take courses here, plan ahead. I've taken Intro to Horticulture, Herbaceous Plant Materials and Entomology.  I think they are figuring out how online courses should work.  I wish University Of Phoenix offered hort courses because they have the system down! Beverly Brown Updated 12-21-2009

Texas Tech courses are fine - but the red tape with getting enrolled and paying for courses is a terror -- but possible. And it's expensive. I've also found another university that offers hort courses on-line -- North Carolina State University.  Here's their schedule per Dr. Helen Kraus as of today:

• Introduction to Horticulture - Offered this summer, HS 201 sec 601
• General Plant Pathology - Offered Fall 2009, PP 315 Principles of Pathology and PP 318 Forest Pathology
• Landscape Design - They plan on offering in Summer 2010
• Entomology - Offered Fall 2009, ENT 201 Insects and People and ENT 425 General Entomology

Submitted 6-29-09 bjb

Introduction to Horticulture

The University of Georgia's online HORT 2000 satisfies the qualification for "Intro to Horticulture".

The tuition is $203 per credit hour, for a total of $609. They are registering for the Spring Semester until February 5th.

http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/idl/courses/offerings/horticulture/HORT2000.phtml