Nate in the Goodfellow Grove at the Center for Urban Horticulture
Nate is a PhD Candidate who became involved with UW Botanic Gardens when he joined Professor Jon Bakker’s lab at the Center for Urban Horticulture in 2013. He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and moved to Seattle in 2013 to start his studies at the UW.
He enjoys spending time hiking and backpacking in the mountains or along the coast. He also spends a bit of time on art projects, usually printmaking.
Nate finished his bachelor’s degree at Calvin College in 2007, majoring in Biology. His favorite class was called Plant Taxonomy, although it covered lots of topics other than taxonomy. He loved it because they learned how to identify plants by their family characteristics, and had several field trips to forests, bogs and prairies to learn the local flora. A few years later he was a Teaching Assistant for this class, and a few years after that was hired as the instructor.
Nate finished his M.S. at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment in 2010. His thesis was on ecological restoration in disturbed areas like roadsides.
Currently, he is working in prairies in the South Sound, studying Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly and its interactions with its larval host plants. A typical day is usually spent in the greenhouse, watering or potting plants for various experiments. There is a captive population of checkerspot butterflies in the lab at most times, so he spends some time with various members of the lab taking care of them or setting up different experiments. Other than that, you can usually find him in the graduate office in Merrill Hall. Mostly, he enjoys coming up with new research ideas, learning new things, and occasionally getting his hands dirty.