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The Lure and the Role of Plant Expeditions in Asia
15 Feb 2007
Peter was born in West Yorkshire, UK, where the beautiful rolling hills demand the outdoors attention of hiker and walker. He graduated in forestry from the University of North Wales, in the shadow (metaphorically) of Mount Snowdon, England’s highest peak. He qualified as an arborist before coming to UBC over 30 years ago to the Faculty of Forestry, where he has taught courses on Garden Design and Woody Plant Materials in the Landscape. Besides climbing trees, his career has led ever upwards to some of the highest mountains in the world, in China, South Korea and Burma.
The UBC website tells us: “(Peter’s) prime focus is the conservation of the uniquely bio-diverse forests of southern Yunnan and border areas of Vietnam and Burma”. His knowledge of the Asian horticultural scene is immense, stemming from collaborations as participant or leader in a dozen or so botanical expeditions of organizations such as the US National Arboretum, the Rhododendron Species Foundation, Duke University (North Carolina), the Capilano University College Ecotourism Program, the Wespelaar Arboretum (Belgium) and, in the Peoples’ Republic of China, at Sichuan University, the Kunming Institute of Botany, the Botanical Gardens of Nanjing and Guizhou – to give you a sample of his international collaborative network.
Peter’s exploration work, and the work of others like him, is of great value to the horticultural community. It leads to the advancement of botanical knowledge, the conservation of natural habitats, and is a boon to our own gardens. The book “The Jade Garden – New and Notable Plants from Asia” by Douglas Justice, Peter Wharton and B Hine is highly recommended reading. In Peter’s talk at our February meeting, we can expect to be entertained as well as educated, and to share, vicariously, in the exciting experiences of the challenging expeditions themselves from the comfort of a soft chair in VanDusen’s Floral Hall.
Peter Wharton
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