VT's Hahn Horticulture Garden gets new director

BLACKSBURG — Like a flower bud reaching out of the ground, so Virginia Tech Landscape Architecture Professor Robert McDuffie is emerging into the sunlight.

Earlier this month, McDuffie moved from his office of 30 years in the basement of Saunders Hall to a window-lit room in the Hahn Horticulture Garden’s pavilion. On Jan. 1, he became the fourth director of Tech’s teaching and pleasure garden, replacing Holly Scoggins, who stepped down at the end of December.

Scoggins, a Tech horticulture professor since 1999, oversaw 12 years of growth at the garden, in both space and finances. During her tenure as director, fundraising from a variety of supporters began in earnest, and T. Marshall Hahn and his late wife Peggy Lee Hahn became major benefactors. The garden grew from fewer than two acres to six acres today, and its annual operating budget rose from about $9,000 to about $150,000, according to Scoggins.

In addition, the pavilion was constructed, which not only provided office space for the staff, but also allowed wedding and events bookings to help finance operations.

It was not an easy decision for Scoggins to step away from a job she essentially volunteered to take on and worked at for no extra pay for 12 years.

“My heart is still up there,” she said from her new office in Saunders.

But Scoggins said as she gears up to apply for a promotion to full professor in the near future, she didn’t feel she could give the garden all the attention it deserves. And, after more than a decade leading the effort, Scoggins said she thinks her friend and colleague, McDuffie, can bring new strengths to the facility.

“I’m a plant geek, but I can’t do design,” Scoggins said. “He’s a landscape architect.”

For McDuffie, taking on the director role is a chance to circle back to a project he helped start in 1984, along with two other professors in the horticulture department.

The Hahn garden, McDuffie said, began as a small test plot for All-America Selection seed trials, a program wherein plants are grown across the country to find the all-around best performing vegetables and ornamentals that are then sold as seed the following year.

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