Our November speaker is John Weagle, distinguished plantsman from Halifax, Nova Scotia. John is a well-known nurseryman/plantsman and speaker, ‘a recipient of the Leslie Hancock Award [I can’t help but mention that Leslie Hancock was one of the two people who first got me interested in rhododendrons, in Montreal] and The Hybridizer's Award of the Rhododendron Society of Canada. With the help of his skilled partner Ken Shannik, who operates Insigne Gardens, they maintain four gardens – including a woodland garden 60 miles from the city, and a vast collection of plants, hardy and tender, which at last count totaled 75 pages of fine print! The whole collection’, he says, ‘he owes to the great generosity of his many’ friends worldwide.

Though John’s horticultural interests are extremely wide ranging, his ‘main interest is the Family Ericaceae, which does so wonderfully well in coastal Nova Scotia’. John says that he has been gardening in Halifax 'since childhood. All was going along well', he says, 'until a friend introduced him to trees in 1971 – then all hell broke loose. For years the books told [him] what could not grow in the Maritimes'. The prospects for horticulture in the Maritimes appeared very grim indeed. But 'John wanted to grow all the exotic things he was reading about. . . . The big turnaround came when he decided to ignore all the books'. Then, 'in the early '70s his good friends and gardeners Walter Ostrom [our banquet speaker at the 1997 ARS conference hosted by the VRS] and Captain Richard Steele [who might be considered the patriarch of rhododendron growing in the Maritimes] introduced him to even more exotic plants and the fateful joys of hybridizing rhododendrons and azaleas. He has been breeding rhododendrons and evergreen azaleas' ever since.

John says ‘he hopes to change everyone’s ideas of gardens and gardening in Atlantic Canada’. While his subject the evening of November 15th, ‘Breeding Wizardry – Nova Scotia Rhododendron Hybrids’, will not likely change our basic ideas of gardening in B. C., it will probably change them, as he says, in regard to colder climates, and especially Atlantic Canada. It may also teach something to those of us living in the colder areas of our own region, and will certainly expand our knowledge of rhododendrons generally as well as introduce us, perhaps, to desirable plants we hadn’t considered before.

John Weagle