Pondering Their Future

Talk to any landscape horticulture graduate from Auburn and they’ll tell you about the incredible scientific education they got. They learned the names of plants, growing climates and soils. But they also talk about how much they learned about dealing with people and leadership.

And no one person’s name gets mentioned more than Harry Ponder ’70, the horticulture professor who retired from Auburn in 2017 after 40 years. Ponder began his career by working at his family’s third-generation nursery business, Ponder’s Nursery in Dadeville, Ala. He started teaching at Auburn in 1978 and became beloved for knowing every student’s name and his tireless work helping to get them jobs upon graduation.

“In 1978 I started what I called a job placement service,” Ponder said. “I started placing students and never did I dream that we would become the only department on campus that placed 100% of our graduates. That built into a huge operation where we had companies coming from California because we promoted that we have the best horticulture graduates in the United States.”

He was instrumental in helping Sutton, Byram and McManus in their careers, connecting McManus with then-Chancellor Robert Khayat of Ole Miss when he was looking to transform the campus.

“All three of these guys have incredible people skills,” Ponder said of Sutton, McManus and Byram. “They’ve got leadership qualities. They’re a little bit different type of leaders, but they are all leaders in their own way.”

“He was amazing, and he just made it exciting,” McManus said of Ponder. “But the thing I really liked about Dr. Ponder was not all his knowledge, and that he knew the plant names. He knew my name. And that made an impression on me, and I’ve tried to emulate him in my leadership style.”

By Todd Deery ’90