John grew up the son of a cotton farmer in West Texas. He attended Texas Tech University before moving to Gainesville, FL, where he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Florida. He was hired from graduate school as Director of Research at a large commercial plant tissue culture lab. Four years later, he became a consultant and managed a commercial foliage plant greenhouse operation in Apopka, FL. He then accepted a horticulture faculty position at Florida Southern College, where he taught from 1988 to 2003. He was the first Fulbright Scholar for FSC - to Africa University in Zimbabwe in 1996-97. He accepted an extension horticulture faculty position at the University of Hawaii - Manoa, where he served from 2003 to 2009, and was the Foliage Specialist for the state of Hawaii during that time. He was a Fulbright scholar for UH at the University of Mauritius in 2004.

In 2009, he accepted the Davis chair in landscape design, horticulture education, and research at Florida Gulf Coast University. He was a Fulbright scholar for FGCU - to Ege University in Turkiye in 2015-16. He was selected as the Outstanding International Horticulturist by the American Society for Horticultural Science in 2018. He served as President, then Chairman of the Board for the Florida State Horticultural Society from 2021 to 2023. In 2024, he was chosen as the CNFA/USAID Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer of the year. Since 1995, he has completed more than 35 volunteer assignments for numerous USAID contracting NGOs. He is a lifetime member of the Florida State Horticultural Society. He is also a member of the American Society for Horticultural Science, the International Society for Horticultural Science, the Society for In Vitro Biology, and the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development.

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