Sadness and Joy
Sue and I were devastated last week to learn of Peter Wharton dying from cancer. Peter curated the Asian Garden at UBC and in the words of our friend Ted in Vancouver, he was the Asian Garden. We had the opportunity (which now seems like an amazing gift) in March to spend time with him in the garden as we were donating some of our Asian collections which he had requested. This was before he had any inkling of illness. We walked all through the garden with him and were awash in his enthusiasm for the new plants that were developing in character as well as the grand new plans for the garden. Peter has been there forever and for a garden to truly develop it is so key to have a consistent vision and direction and Peter's tenure there provided just that. He was one of our key figures in our horticultural world and we will miss him sorely.
At the other emotional extreme, we were very elated to have one of our Cardiocrinum giganteum ssp. yunnanense turn out to be a very good pink. We've a half dozen blooming in the shade garden and the pink one is simply stunning. To our knowledge, this is at least a very rare occurance if not a unique one. One of Sue's first comments as we were talking about who we should immediately call about this was "Peter would have liked to have seen this."
Peter and our pink Cardiocrinum will always be linked in our minds and I can't think of a better association.
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