No VRS member needs an introduction to our speaker for the evening of October 16th, Douglas Justice, except perhaps those who have just joined the Society, say, within the past few weeks. He is a member of the VRS Executive, and Editor of our newsletter Indumentum. As a matter of fact he bears responsibility for the newsletter’s name Indumentum. Most VRS members know all that, and also that, while he is not involved with the VRS, he is working at UBC. But what many members may not know is how he spends his time at UBC, that he is the ‘Associate Director and Curator of Collections at the UBC Botanical Garden. His primary responsibilities are the day to day operations of the garden and the living plant collections, which comprise some 8000 taxa from around the temperate world’. This means that he is responsible for the development, verification, documentation and interpretation of the Botanical Garden plant collections. Moreover, he directs plant breeding, clonal selection and plant development for the Garden itself and for its now renowned Plant Introduction Scheme. He is also a liaison for the BC nursery and landscape industry, the BC Horticulture Articulation Committee, the H.M. Eddie Plant Development Foundation, and the UBC Faculty of Agricultural Sciences Horticulture Curriculum Committee. And he teaches (very successfully evidently), and works as a consultant in various horticultural areas. He is the author of numerous articles, particularly on maples and rhododendrons, but on other botanical subjects as well. Recently he was Acting Director of the Garden while the search was taking place for its present Director, Quentin Cronk. So Douglas is a busy man indeed, and the VRS is fortunate in having him so active with us.

Douglas tells us that he ‘trained at Massot Nursery (in Richmond) and has worked as a gardener in Vancouver and at Windsor Great Park, England’, the latter actually as an apprentice under the direction of the late distinguished horticulturist John Bond. Before that he worked in Stanley Park under Alleyne Cook’s direction. Most importantly perhaps, ‘while in England, he also briefly worked as a bartender.’ (I wonder if he is available for parties and weddings.) His more formal training involves a Bachelor’s degree in Horticulture and a Master’s in Botany from UBC. He will shortly, despite his busy life, be embarking on his PhD. Before moving to UBC, Douglas worked as a horticulture instructor at Kwantlen University College. In addition to being an active member of the Vancouver Rhododendron Society, he is ‘a founding member and past President of the Native Plant Society of BC and a founding member and a North American Vice President of the North American branch of the Maple Society’. In fact, his graduate work was on maples, and this genus will be the subject of his VRS lecture. He is also a member of the Great Plant Picks of the Pacific Northwest tree and conifer committee [an organization whose work is of doubtful value] and Chairman of the Darts Hill Garden Conservancy Trust Society, which owes its existence to long-time VRS member Francisca Darts.

The title for Douglas’s lecture to the VRS is ‘Observations on Recent Asiatic Maple Introductions to UBC Botanical Garden’. This subject has become a passion for him. For that matter, most of us interested in growing rhododendrons have a keen interest in Asiatic maples as well. They just go together.

Douglas Justice