To celebrate the 21st year of the Young Horticulturist of the Year, we are taking a look back on how the competition has shaped some of its winners and finalists.
This includes Andrew Hutchinson, Head Grower – Cover Crops, at T&G Fresh. Andrew won the YHOTY in 2016, and says the competition was integral to his career success. He reflects on being a YHOTY alumni, and his career thus far.
Andrew Hutchinson’s years of study towards a dream job working in horticulture were almost derailed by the bacterial disease PSA wiping out kiwifruit vines across the country.
Andrew had completed his Bachelor of Applied Science majoring in horticulture at Massey University, and thought that horticulture was a guaranteed job.
“I grew up in the Bay of Plenty where there are a lot of kiwifruit orchards, but I graduated at the same time they announced that the PSA disease was in kiwifruit, and the industry had a massive rewind,” he recalls.
Andrew needed tenacity and perseverance as he undertook “a lot of door knocking and getting lots of rejections” before finding work at Aongatete Coolstores, running the grader. He then spent five years working at A S Wilcox, a potato, carrot and onion grower in Pukekohe, initially as a packhouse supervisor and then working in the growing team, doing potato agronomy work (new variety development and crop production).
It was there that Andrew won the Young Grower of the Year competition, going on to take out the title of Young Horticulturist of the Year in 2016. It was a springboard for his career.
“There's a huge amount of development that happens through the competition,” Andrew says. “You stretch yourself and develop new skills and knowledge, as well as build great connections across the sector – still to this day, I can phone someone who I met through the competition to get help, problem-solve or bounce ideas off.”
As part of his win, Andrew received prize money to travel overseas to further his experience – he spent three months in Europe.
“I went to Wageningen University in the Netherlands and did a summer school in glasshouse horticulture, and then visited glasshouses in Spain, France, Switzerland, Iceland and Holland. And that sets you up with a much wider group of international connections, should you have questions that are outside the realm of New Zealand.
“The competition is a pressure pot, it develops you. You have to do your homework and understand what you going to be tested on,” the 38-year-old adds. “There's a whole lot of learning that comes in preparation for the competition and putting yourself under pressure to perform on the day.”
A year after the win, Andrew found his way into glasshouse horticulture – working in one of New Zealand’s largest horticulture companies, T&G (Turners & Growers) Fresh, as a technical manager for its glasshouse division – working in tomato production. His tenacity and perseverance paid off again as Andrew got the chance to move into the high tech industry.
After a two-year stint as Head of Research Cultivation at medicinal cannabis start-up Ora Pharm, Andrew returned to T&G Fresh’s Covered Crops division and is now Head Grower.
“Part of how I've got to where I am is having a mindset of, ‘What else can I learn to put me out of my comfort zone?’ You learn and develop faster doing it that way.”
He is grateful to his horticultural science teacher in high school who sowed the seed of horticulture as a career.
“I love the connection with plants. They've all got the same basic fundamentals – you can take a lot of plant science between industries.”
Now responsible for three glasshouses, totalling 19 hectares, including one of the country’s biggest tomato glasshouses in Pukekohe – Andrew says he is never bored.
”There's always something to challenge you, something to figure out with people, plants, equipment, limited resourcing and money. That makes it really exciting. I've never been a person that can handle boredom. I always want to have stuff to do.”
Grateful for the difference the win made to his career, Andrew now volunteers to be a judge at the two-day competition, and is a speaker at the 2026 professional development day saying, “It's helped me out. So, I want to pay it forward for others.”
He reflects on the decade since his win, and how different the next 10 years are likely to be.
“The nature of horticulture, is that it’s always evolving, and over the next decade there’ll likely be further changes in New Zealand’s covered crops industry given emerging new solutions and innovation. That may mean investing in the latest equipment, technology and data science to provide new forms of heating and energy, as well as enhanced glasshouse control. That’s exciting – providing an opportunity for our sector to continue to evolve and be well set up for the future.”
New Zealand, Andrew says, is also facing a growing challenge with urban sprawl that will need to be addressed over the next decade.
“It remains a complex and highly debated issue – particularly around the classification of land as high-value agricultural land and the restrictions this places on development. There is an increasing disparity where one property may be worth millions due to its development potential, while a neighbouring property is limited to agricultural use and can only be sold accordingly.
“I don’t believe there is a simple solution, but the continued expansion of housing onto highly-productive farmland is not sustainable.”
After working on vast acreages for work, his own home is on a small suburban section – with very little garden.
“I have a little raised box, but that's for my kids, to keep them eating vegetables. We’ve got snow peas, a lot of lettuce, spinach, coriander, dill, eggplants and raspberry canes.
“They love just picking things themselves. They’ll stand out there and eat all day. I barely get to eat any of it!”
Andrew is happy with that though, saying it is teaching his children their food comes from plants not just the supermarket.
