John Grimshaw: “Wanderings of a Bulb Lover”

Wednesday, 9 October 2002, 7:30 p.m., Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History

John Grimshaw has served on the Main Committee of the Alpine Garden Society, for which he has led botanical and horticultural tours to the Altai Mountains of Russia and to California. He has also trekked the Khumbu district of Nepal, Kenya, the Philippines, Socotra, mainland Yemen and the Peloponnese. He is author of the Gardener’s Atlas (1998) and co-author of two additional publications: Checklist of the Vascular Flora of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Snowdrops: A Survey of the Galanthus Cultivars in Cultivation. His plant hunting has taken him to Tanzania, including the montane forests of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where he has collected some 2,000 herbarium specimens and identified new plant species on Kili’s northern slope. In 1990 he headed the Kilimanjaro Elephant Project: a survey and census of the elephant population inhabiting Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, sponsored by Friends of Conservation.

He was employed by the University Botanic Garden, Oxford, to maintain the collections of the late Primrose Warburg at South Hayes, Yarnells Hill, Oxford, a garden rich in snowdrops and hellebores. Now he is employed by K. Sahin, Zaden B.V., Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands, as botanical and horticultural advisor, with responsibility for the development of perennial seed crops. He also is responsible for development of new products for the seed trade.

In February 2001 he established the Griffin Press for the publication of horticultural literature.

Mr. Grimshaw participated in the North American Rock Garden Society’s foreign speakers tour programme during the winter of 1999 and in March 2001 was a keynote speaker for the North American Rock Garden Society winter study weekend in Victoria, B.C. He gardens in Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK.