​history-montage.png

In the summer of 2001, the Department of Ornamental Horticulture and Landscape design (OHLD) joined with the plant sciences portion of the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences (PSS) to form a new department named the Department of Plant Sciences and Landscape Systems (PSLS). Most PSS soils personnel, as instructed by Institute administration, joined the Department of Agricultural and Biosytems Engineering (ABE), which changed its name to the department of Biosystems Engineering and Environmental Science (BEES) and then to the current Biosystems Engineering and Soil Sciences (BESS). On July 1, 2003, our new and official name became the Department of Plant Sciences.
 
This page is dedicated to preserving a history of the Plant Sciences department.  This history includes all legacy departments, and a record of our retired faculty and staff members.
 
Prior to the above mentioned merger, Plant and Soil Sciences had merged in 2000 with Plant and Soil Sciences Extension to form a single department. The Agronomy department had been renamed Plant and Soil Sciences in 1972 and at that time fruit and vegetables were included in the Plant and Soil Sciences umbrella. OHLD was formed from the Department of Horticulture in 1971. 
 
The Plant and Soil Sciences department relocated from Morgan Hall to the Ellington Hall Plant Sciences Building on the UT Agriculture campus when it opened in 1967. The then OHLD department was in charge of the landscaping around the new building. The department currently occupies Ellington PSB and the new Plant Biotech Building, which was opened in August 2003. The department also has Landscape Design faculty located in the Environmental Landscape Laboratory.
 
The Plant Sciences Department and its legacy departments have been an integral part of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources (CASNR) at the University of Tennessee. Horace C. Smith, a retired, now deceased professor in the Plant and Soil Sciences department, wrote a history of CASNR in 1999 titled "An Honored Calling". To read an excerpt from this book on the history of the College of Agriculture, click here. For his excerpt on the Horticulture and OHLD departments, click here. To read the excerpt for Agronomy and Plant and Soil Sciences, click here. For the full book, click here​.