Early B&W Pictures:  The Stone House   Interior   Construction  The Builder   Early Family  Garden Pictures

Early Slides: Background  Spring in the Garden  Other Seasons  Propagation  Specimens The Stone House

  Introduction

After receiving a degree in forestry from Yale in 1907, Bob's father John was appointed by Gifford Pinchot, Secretary of Agriculture, to tour the country promoting conservation. He liked the concept but not the public speaking, so he started a blueberry farm and rhododendron nursery. While he was a speaker, he met many farmers in Virginia and North Carolina who had native rhododendrons growing in their pastures. Chewed down by cows, they became very dense. John dug up these rhododendrons by the boxcar load to clear the farmers' fields, and shipped the plants north for sale. Bob joined him on several of these trips, and later continued the practice himself.

Nancy is pictured above in front of a r. catawbiense, that 
John Anderson, Bob's father and my grandfather, had collected 
from the Appalachian mountains.  This picture was taken at my 
grandparents' home in Mount Holly, New Jersey, in 1940, three 
years before I was born.  Below is a stand of r. catawbiense 
in the mountains of North Carolina.