From the Ground Up host Peter McCrohan, a Princeton, NJ, native has been a horticulturist for nearly 30 years.

   A graduate of Rutgers University, McCrohan's farming experience ranges from organic vegetables to small fruits to exotic cut flowers.

   McCrohan moved to California to manage the Gentry Experimental Farm for its founder, the late Dr. Howard Gentry, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture plant explorer and director of research for the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Ariz.

   Since mid-1980s, McCrohan developed White Squill (Urginea maritima), a flower native to the Mediterranean for the cut fower trade. White Squill flowers from bulbs that can weigh 10 pounds or more. He has also developed Spanish Alliums, a flower he adapted from a variety gathered in the wild.

   McCrohan's White Squill flowers are prized by floral designers and have been seen in Architectural Digest and In Style Magazine, in a feature photo for a story about actress Fran Drescher's Malibu residence. White Squill have appeared in numerous advertisements as well as in the Winter 2002 Pottery Barn catalog and the academic journal "Herbtertia." White Squill was featured as "Plant of the Week" in the garden section of the Orange County Register in September 2002 and in Garden Design magazine in September 2003.

   McCrohan is the farm manager for Native Seed Search in Patagonia, Ariz. He has presented workshops on how to start small-scale cut flower production businesses for the California Small Farm Center. He served as a panelist evaluating small farm public policies during a U.S. Department of Agriculture conference in Chicago in 1999 and was a featured speaker at the Sept. 2002 National Small Farm Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Small Farms Center.

   McCrohan is a former chairman of the planning commission in the city of Murrieta, Calif., and a past member of the Anza/Elsinore/Murrieta Resource Conservation District.