Hall Of Fame Inductees

Loren Oki

 

Loren was born in Sacramento, California to George and Joan Oki while his Father led Oki Nursery which was founded by his Grandfather. Of course, he grew up on the nursery and began working there during the summers while in junior high school.  He obtained a B.S. Ornamental Horticulture in 1974 from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and an M.S. in Botany and Plant Sciences in 1976 from UC Riverside studying plant tissue culture under Dr. Toshio Murashige.  He returned to work at Oki Nursery which, at that time, was known for its ability to grow a wide range of products including full lines of annual crops, potted plants, and nursery crops and for its innovation and implementation of new products and methods in data processing, crop production, product handling, marketing, and shipping.

 

He initially supervised the tissue culture lab, but under the mentorship of Ed Kubo, soon moved into managing propagation, bedding plants, indoor foliage, and potted flowering crops before advancing to Greenhouse Manager. In 1982, he rose to VP of Greenhouse Production managing the company’s 1.2 million square feet of greenhouses and in 1988 President of the company with brother, George, as CEO.  At the nursery, he developed computerized scheduling for the bedding plant, poinsettia, chrysanthemum, bulb, and other crops. He developed a method to calculate the cost of any crop grown by the nursery at any point in the crop cycle and designed software that enabled sales representatives to enter their orders directly into the computer system. He also implemented computerized greenhouse environmental and irrigation controls.

 

After the nursery closed and on consulting with best-friend (and fellow inductee) John Kabashima, he took employment at UC Davis in the Environmental Horticulture Department as a Post-Graduate Researcher under Dr. Heiner Lieth studying the use of soil moisture sensors to manage irrigation of greenhouse crops.  Dr. Lieth also mentored him while conducting his dissertation research that measured the effects of salinity on rose stem elongation and as he completed a Ph.D. in Ecology.

 

Loren was hired as the Cooperative Extension Specialist in Landscape Horticulture in 2002 and later expanded his assignment to Environmental Horticulture to be able to provide services to a broad range of stakeholders.  As a CE Specialist, he led several studies including a large project characterizing runoff from residential sources examining pesticides, human pathogens, and other pollutants and other projects that examined the use of slow sand filters to treat captured irrigation runoff; characterized nursery water use and runoff; and studied the effects of using reclaimed water to irrigate coast redwood.  Loren participated in a nation-wide nursery production project that characterized nursery hydrology and studied nursery water-use, runoff management, water-borne diseases, and methods of water treatment.  The longest running and still ongoing project was initiated at UC Davis in 2004 that examined the response of landscape plants to deficit irrigation treatments to develop irrigation recommendations for those plants in response to landscape water conservation regulations.  This has evolved into the multi-state Climate Ready Landscape Plants project with experimental sites at the University of Washington, Oregon State University, Utah State University, UC South Coast Research and Extension Center in Irvine, and the University of Arizona that enables the comparison of plant performance in response to deficit irrigation across a wide latitude range and differing climates.

 

He has taught thousands of UC Master Gardeners on Landscape Water Management and Diagnosing Horticultural Problems and given hundreds of talks on irrigation and runoff management to industry professionals and regulatory audiences.  As Co-chair of the UC Nursery and Floriculture Alliance, Loren has organized events to provide information and training to growers on water and irrigation management, fertilizers and plant nutrition, and pest and disease management.  He has taught ENH120 Container Media Management to upper division undergraduates and provided lectures for many courses at UC Davis and other institutions.

 

Loren has served as chair or member of many committees and boards for the Plant California Alliance/ California Association of Nurseries and Garden Centers, the Western Region International Plant Propagators’ Society, California Landscape Contractors Association, California Farm Bureau, California Department of Food and Agriculture, California Department of Water Resources, and US Department of Food and Agriculture.  For the University of California, he has served as chair or member of many committees for the Department of Plant Sciences, Department of Human Ecology- Landscape Architecture Program, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences (CAES), and the Agriculture and Natural Resources Division (ANR).  Notably, he was Co-chair of the Implementation Committee for the UC Davis California Center for Urban Horticulture (led by fellow inductee Dave Fujino who serves as its Executive Director), Chair of the CAES Greenhouse Advisory Committee, and as a member of several search committees for UCD faculty.  For UC ANR, he has held positions as UC Publications Associate Editor for Environmental Horticulture, Interim Director of the Statewide Master Gardener Program, Landscape Horticulture Workgroup Chair, Nursery and Floriculture Workgroup Chair, Co-Director of the UC Nursery and Floriculture Alliance, and served on search committees for CE Advisors and Specialists.

 

Loren and Cynthia (Nakamura) will be celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary in 2024. Cyndy is daughter of Frank and Asaye Nakamura of Blue Hills Nursery, Whittier and there’s story there, too.

 

“If it’s fun, it’s never work. If it’s not fun, it’ll never work.” - Hobie Alter