Laura Billington BSc Research Technician: Fruit Breeding

My mother and grandmother introduced me to gardening at an early age. Every corner of my grandmother’s city yard was filled with nutritious vegetables, tasty fruits, and beautiful flowers (not one square foot of grass!).  I helped her bury her compostable scraps between the rows of her garden and she always encouraged me to pick a bouquet of flowers to take home. I spent lots of time with my mother as she planted, tended, and harvested a vegetable garden every summer.  We gathered mushrooms after it rained, travelled backroads to find our favorite saskatoon berry patches, and searched out a wild strawberry patch in our pastures. I could feel Mom’s satisfaction as we filled our cold-room shelves with jams, jellies and pickles and our freezer with vegetables and fruit.  However, it wasn’t until I had my own home and yard that I began to realize that I really came alive when I could spend time developing an oasis of my own.  Incorporating my grandmother’s tricks of combining function and beauty, my spirit was fed by creating that backyard retreat.  I decided to follow that interest, working part-time in pharmacy while attending the University of Saskatchewan and graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture degree in 2002.  When we toured the Hort Field lab, I probably had stars in my eyes thinking about how cool it would be to come to work there every day. It took me fifteen years, but I made it!  In 2017, I joined the Fruit Breeding Program team as a plant technician and am happy to balance my pharmacy work with horticulture therapy!