Jason Watson

Director, U.S. Sales

I first started working in forestry because of my love for the outdoors. But my grandmother was also a Junior High science teacher, making me curious about the natural world and how things grew. And that piqued my interest and really got me excited about learning more about the natural environment around me and immediately made me interested in that as a major.

We often find ourselves giving the best advice we can based on the landowners’ objectives. And when the landowner or the forester working with the landowner feels good about a decision they’re making, and then they do it – they call us back in five years and say, “You got to come to see this! You wouldn’t believe how well the trees have grown, and see how good the stand of trees looks in terms of quality”, that’s the most gratifying part of our job. Our clients will call us and ask questions about when you think I should we should start planning how many trees per acre. Should we plant? Should I plant bareroot or container? It’s not always easy to answer because there are many topics. As it relates to early rotation, silviculture, and reforestation, we even talk about the markets they will be selling the trees into, so we try to give them the best advice on setting that stand up for success. The perfect day for me is when I join one of our reforestation advisors who has developed a really good relationship, and it may be with a forest landowner. It may be with a forestry consultant, or it may be a forestry consultant that is also a private landowner. But they have a reforestation advisor who has walked hand in hand with them, helping them with a series of reforestation decisions.

After three, five, or even seven years down the road, we’ve been invited to come back out there and see the results. It’s very rewarding to see the landowner, the client of ArborGen, be so happy with the results that align with the objectives they want to accomplish. That’s the most gratifying part of the job and the most rewarding part of what I do at ArborGen.

Because I’m a forester, a forest landowner myself, and now that I’ve been in the industry for over 25 years, I’ve seen from where we’ve come from to where we are now. Landowners now realize the gains from genetics and good silviculture that we never got to experience when I first started my career. I got into this business because I love the management side of it – to see little seedlings become big trees. The difference is night and day – our capabilities when I started my career in the mid-90s to what we have now. 26-27 years later.