Dr. Laura Deeter

I’ve been interested in the outdoors ever since I was a child. One of my first ‘big girl’ jobs was for Big City Garden Center and I fell in love with helping people learn about how to pick the perfect plant for their situation. I stumbled around as an undergraduate through several majors and eventually landed in horticulture. Some of my first classes were plant identification, and after that I was hooked!

My appointment isn’t research related, but I’m excited to be teaching all new classes!

As I was taking landscape classes I thought I wanted to do what most of my peer group did, own a landscape company. I even started one and ran it for close to 8 years. But when I was required to take a speech course, I also fell in love with public speaking, and began looking for careers that would be a blend of outdoor time, public speaking, and plants. Enter graduate school and a requirement to TA classes. Toward the end of my career, a faculty member told me about a faculty position at Ohio State ATI in Wooster, and the rest, shall we say is history. OSU Columbus and Chadwick Arboretum is where I fell in love with plants. CFAES Wooster and ATI is were I fell in love with students and developed my skills in the classroom.

None currently

The Perennial Plant Association Annual Symposium. It travels to various areas in the country (and Canada) and is a week of plant lectures, garden tours, production center tours, and networking with people interested in plants.

I’m excited to continue meeting people and learning about all the classes and research happening in HCS.

I love games (both board and video games), painting the minis from board games, reading, playing with my dogs, playing piano, drawing, hanging with family, and CrossFit.