Have You Met… Sherrie Benson?

Have you met Sherrie, Horticulturist for the U of A Botanic Gardens? Spend the next few minutes getting to know her a little better.

Where is your favourite place on campus?

The Education Quad. I worked for Facilities and Operations when I first started my career in horticulture. I was a groundsperson, and then I was promoted to supervising grounds, and I was lucky enough to work on the renovation of that area and many other areas on campus. But that one in particular was very special to me because we got to install a Ginkgo (a type of maidenhair tree), which is pretty rare. That little area was a labor of love. We took it from just grass to a nice little area to sit.

Tablet or paper?

Paper. I like to handwrite things when I have the choice. I don’t often have a choice since I have to do most things digitally. I kind of miss the old hard copy way of organizing things.

Name one thing you’ve brought to work from home.

My daughter — she’s ten years old. Because I work in agriculture, I’ve been assisting with the Canola Council of Canada on and off throughout the years, and they hold a lot of fun and educational events. They have invited me and my daughter to come along to these events as a junior IPM technologist, where she runs around and actually does the sanitation stations and assists people in the educational games that we play.

What is the one thing you can’t live without?

This is kind of a nerdy answer, but biodiversity. I live on an acreage and I have a hard time looking at some of the new construction in the city and the urban sprawl where people have one tree in their front yard and their neighbor has the same tree, and their neighbor has the same tree, and so on. I find I’m a lot more relaxed and at peace because I’m aware of the need for biodiversity when I’m in a situation that represents that type of environment.

If you won airfare to anywhere in the world, where would you go?

The Kew Gardens in England. The last time I was in England I was not a horticulturist and was unaware of botanic gardens. Kew Gardens is one of the most historical and well-documented botanical gardens on the globe. Darwin’s work exists there, their record-keeping is phenomenal — you can go back hundreds of years, and the beginnings of taxonomy started there. Because of my career and my passions, it’s really important that I see that place at some point.

You can invite anyone — alive or dead, real or fictional — to dinner. Who would it be?

Janis Joplin. She was a rock singer in the 60s. She sang “Me and Bobby McGee” and performed at Woodstock. I think she’s a groundbreaking female who was willing to put herself out there at a time when that was a really big challenge.

If you could switch jobs with someone else on campus for a week, what would you do?

Soil sciences of some sort. I would probably ask to work with one of our soil scientists in the faculty to do some hands-on lab type of work. I’ve studied it a lot, but I haven’t had a lot of hands-on experiences with the research or assessments of soil on the lab side of things.

What does “uplifting the whole people” mean to you?

I have a huge passion for extension education. I do a lot of extension education by default because of my position within the U of A. I believe very strongly that that type of education takes the research which our research teams are working on, and provides that information to technologists who are actively using the data and implementing it in effective ways. The technologists then have the opportunity to do public speaking to present that to the general public in ways that they understand. To me, that’s my contribution to uplifting the whole people.

If you could solve any problem in the world, what would it be?

I would plant a lot of trees. I’m not a fan of bylaws and things like that, but there would be bylaws that you had to have one tree per so many square meters on your property because of global warming.

I always point out to my friends — when we ride old school banana seat bikes for fun — the temperature difference when we get into the Mill Creek Ravine. The minute you’re in underneath that tree canopy you can actually feel a number of degrees difference in temperature. It’s cooler and more comfortable.

What 3 words best describe your U of A experience?

Rewarding, comfortable, and fun.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.