Employee highlight: John Sauer
April 7, 2025
Longtime groundsman set to retire after 50 years on the job
One of Facilities Management's longest-serving employees, John Sauer, will retire this May after 50 years with the Landscape department.
Sauer first joined the University in 1974, moving from Richmond where he had been working in construction to a property in Batesville where he still lives today. His first day he was assigned to pull weeds on the Monroe Hill property where Brown College is located, working alongside a group of female UVA students nicknamed the “Weedettes.” At the end of his first day he had remarked, “This ain't working,” he recalls.
“If I hadn't been out with the ‘Weedettes,’ I wouldn't be here today,” said Sauer, sitting in his current office at Brown College not far from where he weeded that first day.
Over the past 50 years, Sauer has worked all over Grounds — serving as the gardener of the president's home at Carr's Hill; supervising the Central Grounds and the Lawn landscape crew; and now for his last year of full-time employment he is caring for the landscape at Brown College, where he and his wife have been fellows since 1998.
“I have always enjoyed my work, you're working with the [four] seasons, as well as the academic seasons. We're really in a special spot horticulturally and culturally,” he said.
In Sauer's early years he was mentored by an older landscaper, John Roberts, who taught him to “take his work seriously” and then later by Ann Hereford, wife of Frank Hereford, the University's president from 1974 to 1985. Sauer served as the gardener of Carr's Hill through four of the University's nine presidents, eventually following former UVA President Teresa Sullivan over to the University's property at Sprigg Lane while the Carr's Hill property underwent a renovation. He moved over to his current assignment at Brown College last fall.
“I was lucky to be put up at Carr's Hill and mentored by Mrs. Hereford. I stayed with them for 11 years and she really taught me all about gardening,” Sauer said, adding that she did all of her own flower arranging and taught him “the style of grace and elegance.”
A proud memory that sticks out from that time was during Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1976. During her lunch on Grounds, the table featured a flower arrangement of Queen Elizabeth roses that were grown and tended to by Sauer.
In the mid-1980s, Sauer was promoted to foreman and then supervisor of Central Grounds and the Lawn where he served for the next 18 years. He returned to Carr's Hill in 2002 serving under then-President John Casteen and later President Sullivan until 2018. During this time, he was an instrumental part of Virginia Garden Week, leading tours of the property and filling the Carr's Hill carriage house with buckets of fresh flowers that he donated to all of the Garden Week volunteers. From 2018 to 2024, Sauer cared for the property at Sprigg Lane, which includes five acres of botanical trees.
As a fellow in residence at Brown College, Sauer now cares for the Monroe Hill property while also serving alongside his wife as the college's horticultural experts, hosting flower arranging and wreath-making workshops and tree tours for students.
“I love being a part of the flow of the students,” he said. “The students — they always give me hope. There's just something about seeing [life] through their eyes.”
Sauer has enjoyed the continuity of working at the same place for the past 50 years — as he walks the Grounds, he can recall the history of specific trees and when they were planted. A cherry blossom a graduate asked him to plant in front of Monroe Hall (back when “guerilla plantings” were more common — these days all plantings are approved by a University committee); an Ash tree transplanted from Pavilion Garden IX to the McGuffey gravesite in the University Cemetery; and three towering trees in the cemetery that he planted with former longtime landscaper, the late Frank Hill, and would sometimes sleep under back when he first joined UVA and didn't have a car.
“I have a lot of roots here,” said Sauer. “With all of the trees here and everything else.”
In his retirement, Sauer plans to spend his time caring for his 40 acres in Batesville (a 22-mile trek to work that he still makes by bike a few times a week), and will continue his duties as a Brown College fellow on a part-time basis.
Jane Centofante
Communications senior generalist
UVA Facilities Management
(434) 982-5846
janecentofante@virginia.edu