INDUSTRY
Master gardener
John Ruter talks ornamental plant breeding by Michael Terrazas for CAES News
Photo by Dorothy Kozlowski
John Ruter, Allan M. Armitage Professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, was named UGA’s 2021 Inventor of the Year, recognizing his many years of work developing and testing new ornamental plant cultivars, many of which are sold commercially and adorn landscapes around the country. John Ruter realized at a young age that he belonged in a garden. He came to UGA in 1990 to serve as the nursery crop research specialist at the Tifton Campus after earning bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees in horticulture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the University of Tennessee and the University of Florida, respectively. He now serves as the Allan M. Armitage Professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, specializing in ornamental plant breeding and production. Ruter also serves as director of the UGA Trial Gardens and was named UGA’s 2021 Inventor of the Year for the many plant varieties he’s developed over his years at the university. In this interview, Ruter talks about his passion for plant breeding and the science behind creating the types of greenery that adorn gardens and manicured landscapes across the country.
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You identified your career path pretty early on. What led you to this lifelong interest in horticulture? I grew up in San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles, and I took a horticulture class in junior high school. That was my first introduction, and I found plant propagation fascinating: how seeds are dispersed, the variation you see when growing seeds, and being able to take cuttings—just taking a piece of stem off a plant—and put them in a mist system and grow a new plant. By the time I was 14, I was working in a wholesale nursery, and then my parents moved to Ventura County during my high school years. There was a small FFA program there, so I got involved with that. Fortunately, my adviser was also trained in landscape design and was a horticulturist himself. We were a good match.
