This Outdoors Enthusiast Learned To Love The Arboretum As a Student. He Has Returned To Help The Community Love It Too.
If campus were a gigantic house, the Arb would be its front porch. That’s what Mendoza believes. “It’s that space between public and private. It’s the perfect area to welcome people from the Saint Peter and Southern Minnesota community to the college,” he says.
As the administrative and program specialist at the Arb, he sits on Gustavus’s front porch, connecting people to the community. He manages weddings and events, and supervises the gardens around the Melva Lind Interpretive Center.
Mendoza’s own connection to the Arb bloomed when, as a student, he took the course Interpreting the Spring Landscape with Jim Gilbert, then the director of the Arboretum. “I spent a lot of time in the Arb because of it.”
After graduating, he spent time in Fairbanks, Alaska growing cold weather vegetables. He worked in community-supported agriculture on his family farm in Milford, Iowa. Then he found his way back to Gustavus by taking a temporary position at the Arb. “Going from vegetable farming to working in the Arboretum showed me how the environment can sustain us not just physically but spiritually too.” he says.
That spiritual pull brought Mendoza back to Gustavus again and again. After his temp job at the Arb, Mendoza became a nurseryman and landscape professional. He returned to Gustavus again to work in the Provost’s Office before finding his current job back at the Arb. He even tied the knot at the Arb; he and his husband were married there in 2021.
“It’s fun to be back on campus and see the professors I’ve had, and to almost blend in with the students,” he says. Along with those students, professors, and staff, Mendoza is thinking about the Arb as the gateway to Gustavus in the next 50 years. “You may look at the Arb and say, ‘Okay we planted the trees, now we can sit back.’ But we have native plant populations to take care of and features to maintain.”
“It’s pretty special that a school the size of Gustavus has an Arboretum with dedicated staff and programs,” he says. “It’s more than just a piece of land.”