Mr. Mittan started working in gardens as a small child
before he went to school, helping out on relatives' farms
and planting annuals at his parent's home. He first landscaped
one of his family's homes in Fort Walton Beach, Florida in 1959
and later landscaped homes in Daegu, Korea and Camp Springs,
Maryland.
He began working in lawn service at the age of ten,
eventually building a company that employed over a dozen workers
in Tallahassee by the 1980s.
After obtaining a Master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning,
he expanded to landscaping new homes for Majestic Homes, a
Leon County construction company, in the early 1990s and
added plant sales of nursery stock shortly after that.
As the landscaping business waned, he concentrated more heavily
on developing the botanical gardens with the aim of eventually
creating a public park.
Mr. Mittan also serves on the Board of Directors of
Botanical World in Hakalau, Hawaii, where many of the plants developed by Mr. Mittan are on display.
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