• Horticulture Student Wins UNL Venture Plan Competition Print E-mail
Horticulture Student Wins UNL Venture Plan Competition
Dan Moore's love for Nebraska and the hardy plants that grow well here prompted a business idea that has won him $1,000 and a potential career.

Moore, a senior horticulture business major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, won first place in the undergraduate competition of the 10th annual UNL Venture Plan Championship. Sponsored by the Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship and Cornhusker Bank, it judges UNL students on business plans they have created.
 
The Omaha native said he has been working retail jobs in garden centers for almost six years and had seriously been thinking for several years of opening his own garden center. While taking a horticulture business class at UNL, he realized that if he did start his own center, it would have to be different from every other garden center.
 
It was this idea that pushed Moore to design a garden center that celebrates Nebraska products and the sustainable plants and ecosystems that thrive here.  The business concept is focused on the growing trends of going "green" and being sustainable.  Moore's idea also centers on the Great Plants for the Great Plains, which are plants identified by the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum as being reliably hardy for the Nebraska climate.
 
Dave Lambe, professor who teaches the horticulture business class for undergraduates and graduate students, requires all students in the class to write a business plan and submit it to the venture plan competition.

Two of Lambe's graduate students tied for second place in that competition. Justin VanWart of Lincoln created a business plan for an organic lawn care business while Trentee Applegarth of Whitman developed a business plan to create green roofs.

Winners of the competition are announced in December after judging of the business plans by business owners, accountants, attorneys, bankers and other professionals in Lincoln, Lambe said. This year's competition had 31 undergraduate students from several colleges at UNL.
 
Lambe, who has taught the class for four years, has seen other students of his win or do well in the competition. At least five of his students have pursued their business ideas after leaving UNL.
 
"They are coming up with these ideas on their own. These are student ideas, not my own," he said.  
 
Moore said he was shocked and honored to win the competition.
 
"I got some good feedback from the judges," he said. "One of them told me it was the right business at the right time in the right place."
 
After representing UNL in the New Ventures World Competition at the end of March in Lincoln, Moore plans to pursue his business, possibly by the spring of 2010 or 2011.
 
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