Sara D. Groves
1916 - 2013

Sara D. Groves moved to Oxford in 1961. She bought a wholesale nursery that was then located on the southeast corner of Highway 278 and Emory Street and founded the company “Florascape Design,” which she ran for 16 years. Groves won numerous awards for her beautification work as an expert horticulturist and florascape designer. She grew flowers for wholesale clients such as Six Flags and Disney World. Groves was also a founding board member of the Georgia Commercial Flower Growers Association and, in 1985, was awarded its Outstanding Member Award.
Groves developed and designed the floral displays for the 1996 Olympic Games equestrian events in Atlanta and was a fundamental force in bringing the Games to Atlanta. Groves’s Queen Anne Style home garden was featured on the Home and Garden Network program, “A Gardener’s Diary” in 2002. In 2003, she was honored at a reception sponsored by the Atlanta History Center’s national exhibit “Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business.” Groves was among 52 Atlanta women chosen, including Coretta Scott King, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, Georgia Secretary of State, Cathy Cox, and others.
In 1935, she was one of the first women to attend Georgia State College for Men, now Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton. She earned her B.S. degree in home economics and chemistry in 1937 from the University of Georgia. She went on to study marketing at the University of Chicago while completing an internship as a dietician at Cook County Hospital and later taught nutrition at Duke University Medical School.
As a young woman, Groves was primarily focused on a career as a home economist and dietician. In the 1940s, Groves served as food service coordinator to the Pentagon and worked as the chief administrative dietician at Fort Benning Hospital. During World War II, while her husband was serving in the European theatre, Groves was hired by the War Department to serve as the food services executive on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. Groves had to keep her work top secret – even from her family -- and traveled with a security detail wherever she went. After the war, she received a commendation for “work essential to the production of the Atomic Bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II.” Several years later, while working at the University of Houston as food service director, Groves helped develop the formula for instant rice.
She became interested in flowers while living in Fairbanks, Alaska, where her husband was stationed as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force. Her career as a horticulturalist began with her work beautifying the Ladd Air Force Base. Groves later went to work for Georgia Tech and the city of Atlanta, touring the country as a lecturer. She introduced the idea of instant garden color by marketing seasonal colorful plants in one-inch “cell pack” trays and four-inch pots, a radical concept at the time that is in common use today in every nursery and do-it-yourself center around the world.
Sara Groves’s life was as colorful as her garden. As a young girl, she flew in an airplane with Amelia Earhart (for the price of twenty-five cents); she went horseback riding with General George S. Patton while at Fort Benning and with Manhattan Project scientists J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie R. Groves; she even visited President Lyndon Johnson on his ranch in Texas. While living in Hawaii in the 1950s, she worked as a model for the prestigious John Robert Powers agency. After moving to Alaska, she anchored a television program for the state university. In 1961, when her husband retired from the Air Force, they moved to Oxford and made it their home.
Groves is well remembered locally for her prize hydrangeas when she put them on display for the American Hydrangea Society’s Spring Tour, which featured gardens in and around Atlanta. Groves’s home garden was the only garden in Georgia chosen to appear in Jim Wilson’s book, Gardening in the Golden Years. When asked to name her favorite flower, Groves is known to have replied, “whatever I’m looking at -- at that particular time.”
Groves developed and designed the floral displays for the 1996 Olympic Games equestrian events in Atlanta and was a fundamental force in bringing the Games to Atlanta. Groves’s Queen Anne Style home garden was featured on the Home and Garden Network program, “A Gardener’s Diary” in 2002. In 2003, she was honored at a reception sponsored by the Atlanta History Center’s national exhibit “Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business.” Groves was among 52 Atlanta women chosen, including Coretta Scott King, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, Georgia Secretary of State, Cathy Cox, and others.
In 1935, she was one of the first women to attend Georgia State College for Men, now Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton. She earned her B.S. degree in home economics and chemistry in 1937 from the University of Georgia. She went on to study marketing at the University of Chicago while completing an internship as a dietician at Cook County Hospital and later taught nutrition at Duke University Medical School.
As a young woman, Groves was primarily focused on a career as a home economist and dietician. In the 1940s, Groves served as food service coordinator to the Pentagon and worked as the chief administrative dietician at Fort Benning Hospital. During World War II, while her husband was serving in the European theatre, Groves was hired by the War Department to serve as the food services executive on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. Groves had to keep her work top secret – even from her family -- and traveled with a security detail wherever she went. After the war, she received a commendation for “work essential to the production of the Atomic Bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II.” Several years later, while working at the University of Houston as food service director, Groves helped develop the formula for instant rice.
She became interested in flowers while living in Fairbanks, Alaska, where her husband was stationed as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force. Her career as a horticulturalist began with her work beautifying the Ladd Air Force Base. Groves later went to work for Georgia Tech and the city of Atlanta, touring the country as a lecturer. She introduced the idea of instant garden color by marketing seasonal colorful plants in one-inch “cell pack” trays and four-inch pots, a radical concept at the time that is in common use today in every nursery and do-it-yourself center around the world.
Sara Groves’s life was as colorful as her garden. As a young girl, she flew in an airplane with Amelia Earhart (for the price of twenty-five cents); she went horseback riding with General George S. Patton while at Fort Benning and with Manhattan Project scientists J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie R. Groves; she even visited President Lyndon Johnson on his ranch in Texas. While living in Hawaii in the 1950s, she worked as a model for the prestigious John Robert Powers agency. After moving to Alaska, she anchored a television program for the state university. In 1961, when her husband retired from the Air Force, they moved to Oxford and made it their home.
Groves is well remembered locally for her prize hydrangeas when she put them on display for the American Hydrangea Society’s Spring Tour, which featured gardens in and around Atlanta. Groves’s home garden was the only garden in Georgia chosen to appear in Jim Wilson’s book, Gardening in the Golden Years. When asked to name her favorite flower, Groves is known to have replied, “whatever I’m looking at -- at that particular time.”