Marquess after his first 10K race in Aiken, South Carolina, with his fiancée Gabby (left) and his mother Maureen (right).
Marquess James has been planting things for as long as he can remember.
“As a little kid, I used to help people in the community by planting flowers and vegetables for them,” he says. “I loved it, and I still do.”
He enjoyed it so much, he later earned a bachelor’s in plant and soil science from Tuskegee University in Alabama. He worked in sustainable food systems for a while before a college friend shared an opportunity to put his academic training and love of growing plants to use here at Weyerhaeuser.
Ever since, he’s applied his lifelong green thumb to planting and growing seedlings as a nursery production specialist at our nursery in Aiken, South Carolina. In his five years at Weyerhaeuser, Marquess has helped plant, cultivate and lift 325 million seedlings. Half of those have gone to internal foresters to replant our Southern Timberlands, and the other half have gone to external customers.
But he doesn’t just grow plants — he also believes in lifting others up by giving them the sorts of opportunities he had, and he has returned to Tuskegee to recruit interns from his alma mater.
“I was so proud to do that,” he says. “If my college buddy hadn’t told me about this opportunity, then I would’ve never been sitting here having a conversation with you today.”
Marquess (center, in orange vest) and the Vin Woods Contractor crew celebrate finishing up harvest season at the nursery.
MEET MARQUESS
Your title is nursery production specialist. Tell us what you do.
I work with a team of seven, growing our pine seedlings from seed. Mostly loblolly pine, and a little bit of slash pine.
What I do depends on the season. We have sow season, culture season and harvest season. Sow, we’re planting the seeds to grow the crop. Culture season, we’re growing our seedlings over an eight-month time span. And then we harvest our seedlings, lifting them out of the ground to ship out to our customers.
Tell us what your day is like.
Right now, we’re in harvest season. I'm responsible for shipping seedlings to our internal and external customers, which includes managing inventory in our seedling cooler.
It's a lot of time on a forklift during these cold winter months. I spend a lot of my time in the cold, but I enjoy it. It’s the fruit of everything that goes into growing the seedlings all year round and seeing how all that hard work paid off.
What’s your favorite part of the job?
The team here at Aiken nursery. They help me be the person I am and encourage me to put in my best. We help each other out to get the job done. We’re all here for the same reason: to grow ourselves, to work safely, and to grow a successful crop.
I also really like driving the tractors. And being out in the field, doing any type of soil preparation, getting fields ready for the year. I run our planter, the machine that plants our seeds. For the past four years, I've been a part of planting half of our annual crop.
Finally, I enjoy pruning during the summer months. Pruning is important to make sure we have the best, premium-quality seedlings.
Marquess, far right, attends a Southern Regeneration recruiting visit at Auburn University College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment’s career fair.
You must have some challenges. What are they?
Any type of equipment breakdown. If tractors are down during our sow period, that stops us from getting the crop into the ground. Or if a harvester breaks during harvest season, that can put us down when we’re trying to complete orders to ship out to customers. Then it’s all hands on deck. If we can’t fix the breakdown on site, we'll reach out to our vendor, John Deere. But we have a lot of skilled people here and we all bring our heads together. As long as we get it done safely and can get production back up and running, everybody's happy.
Have you worked on any big projects in the past few years that you're proud of?
I was asked to go to a career fair at Auburn University to look for summer interns. It’s in Auburn, Alabama; my hometown is just 30 minutes away, so I was excited to go back.
But our positions didn't get a lot of interest in my opinion — it was a forestry recruitment career fair, and our work is more focused toward horticulture. So I got permission to go over to my alma mater, Tuskegee, and share the internship out to students there. I was so proud to do that. I found my role at Aiken thanks to a college friend, and this felt like a way I could do the same for someone else by showing them an opportunity that could potentially turn into a career.
I’ve been fortunate to have two great mentors here at Weyerhaeuser. One is Wayne Little, who recently retired as manager of our seed orchard out in Lyons, Georgia. He's been a great inspiration, and I definitely want to give him his flowers. Second is Ron Crear, our director of inclusion, who told me about our Reflections of Color ERG. My recruiting work was partly inspired by them; they’re both great people, and I truly appreciate them.
Marquess enjoying a tailgate gathering at Tuskegee University’s Homecoming game.
Tell us about your other interests. What do you like to do when you're not at work?
I work out, spend time with family and watch college football. I'm a native of Alabama, so Roll Tide! I like to cook and try new healthy recipes.
To unwind, I run. I love to go to the park after work and get a quick run in before I go home. I completed my first 10k last April, and I'm training for my first half marathon right now. People might say that's not unwinding, but any runner can tell you it really is peace of mind.
