Whitney Griffin

 Whitney Griffin

Whitney Griffin

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Biography

Texas A&M University College Station - Horticulture



Experience

  • Southern Landscape of Texas

    Landscape Design Manager

    Whitney worked at Southern Landscape of Texas as a Landscape Design Manager

  • Texas A&M University

    Lecturer

    I taught courses related to hand drafting and graphic communication of landscape design, residential landscape design, computer aided drafting, and landscape installation and maintenance best practices. I developed new courses: Landscape Estimating, Bidding, and Operations; and Landscapes of Sustainable Built Environments. I also served as a co-adviser for the TAMU Horticulture Club, which competed at the Southern Region ASHS, national ASHS, and NALP NCLC events each year.

  • Furbish Company

    Director, Environmental Stewardship

    I ran the maintenance division for Furbish, a firm specializing in the design, construction, and maintenance of living roofs, bio walls, and green retaining walls. During my tenure we managed the maintenance of over 2 million square feet of green roof and living walls in the region with clients from Raleigh to New York City and as far west as Chicago. We maintained most major commercially-available living roof systems including vegetated mats, modular systems, ultra lightweight extensive, and intensive rooftop gardens.

Education

  • Auburn University

    Master of Science

    Horticulture
    My thesis project served to explore the effects of aging a pine tree-based horticultural substrate, WholeTree, on the growth of commercially-grown greenhouse annuals and bedding plants. In the Southeastern US, peat has become quite expensive when it is available at all. WholeTree is a peat replacement created by milling the waste products left by the forestry and logging industry, which is quite strong in the Southeast.

  • Auburn University

    Bachelor of Science (BS), Master of Science (MS)

    Ornamental Horticulture

  • University of Maryland College Park

    Doctor of Philosophy

    Plant Sciences
    My dissertation project goals were two-fold. First, I collaborated with a local green roof firm to develop a low-carbon green roof substrate blend to mitigate the massive carbon footprint associated with traditional green roof expanded mineral substrates. Due to the proprietary nature of this work it was not publishable; therefore my secondary goals were developed in order to fulfill the expectation of publishing my dissertation. I worked to quantify the effects of substrate organic content and particle size on plant growth and stormwater retention, and incorporated the findings into a substrate sub-routine of a predictive model for green roof stormwater retention performance.