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Peter Wharton
1950-2008
The Peter Wharton Lecture
The Peter Wharton Lecture has been established to honour Peter's memory and legacy.
Lecturers by Date:
Dr. Peter H. Raven April 17, 2010
Former Curator, David C. Lam Asian Garden
A. Peter Wharton, curator of the David C. Lam Asian Garden at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Botanical Garden, died on June 30th 2008. Peter graduated with a forestry degree from the University of North Wales, Bangor, UK in 1973, before training as an arborist at the Merrist Wood Agricultural College, Guildford, Surrey, UK. He emigrated to Canada in 1975 and spent the greater part of his life (more than 30 years) developing the Asian Garden, a singularly beautiful garden filled with plants both subtle and spectacular, all skillfully arranged within the native Point Grey forest. Many would say that UBC's Asian Garden is the Botanical Garden's signature garden, and it is not hyperbole to say that Peter's garden is famous around the world. Peter led or participated in nine field expeditions to China, South Korea and northern Vietnam.
The Asian Garden started out as a duplicate collection of rhododendrons, mirroring the Rhododendron Species Foundation’s early collections from Great Britain. Peter made a study of the rhododendrons here and in other gardens and was clearly struck by their biology and beauty. Ultimately, his interest led him to field studies and seed collections of rhododendrons and their associates in the wild. This gave him significant insight into the ecology of plants in gardens and in nature. Lately, his focus was the conservation of the uniquely bio-diverse forests of southern Yunnan and border areas of Vietnam and Burma. In particular, he was interested in Magnolia, Styracaceae, Acer, Sorbus, Hydrangeaceae, Araliaceae, Lauraceae and of course, Rhododendron. Over the years, he collected much seed, which was distributed to many gardens.
The plants that now grace the Asian Garden represent many things fundamental to Peter's vision and ethic. Most of the species represented are grown from seed collected in the wild, and many of those, Peter collected himself over the various expeditions he took to China, Korea and Vietnam. Some of the plants in the garden are rare or threatened in their native habitats. Peter was a strong advocate for using the garden's collections to promote conservation. His expeditions were always collaborative ventures and the fruits of the relationships Peter fostered with plant explorers, scientists and garden professionals around the world are seen in many other gardens, in his writing and especially in the Asian Garden. He was an able communicator, particularly on issues of ecology and conservation, and the garden and a generation of students benefitted from his considerable expertise on these subjects.
Asia was not his only focus. An avid reader of natural history and a careful observer, Peter knew more about the world than most learned people know about their own backyards. He was as much at home discussing geological or climatological phenomena as he was splitting floristic or taxonomic hairs. Peter and his wife, Sarah, and three children regularly hiked, camped and snow-shoed the mountains of southern BC and northern Washington state. Peter knew these habitats well and knew how important wilderness is to a civilized society. Mostly, he was a devoted father and husband, a passionate and eloquent advocate for plants and their habitats, an enormously creative gardener and expert plantsman, a great teacher and a generous individual.
Peter Wharton's last trip to China was a botanical and cultural tour that he and Sarah organized for the UBC Friends of the Garden. It seems fitting that on that tour he was able to introduce Botanical Garden volunteers to the rich forests and threatened environments of southern China that he advocated so passionately for protecting. More than that, the group met with local people whose professional lives had intersected with Peter's, but who had developed real friendships with him. Although Peter's health was declining rapidly during the tour, he remained exuberant and positive about everything. In his last weeks, weakened and barely able to stand, he visited the Botanical Garden and remarked that he was happy, seeing what he'd accomplished. He'll be sorely missed.
