Rhododendron Garden Site Dedicated
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Fig.7. Miss Susan Wiley, granddaughter of Mrs. Secrest, helps plant a rhododendron at the formal dedication of the Great Lakes Chapter Display Garden at the Secrest Arboretum, Wooster, Ohio. |
The 7-acre rhododendron display garden located in the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center's Secrest Arboretum, was dedicated on Sept. 11. It is a cooperative project of the Research Center and the Great Lakes Chapter, American Rhododendron Society.
When completed, the garden will contain all rhododendrons and azaleas which will grow satisfactorily in the Great Lakes Region. The plants are being donated by rhododendron growers and nurserymen from throughout the region.
Miss Susan Wiley, 10-year-old granddaughter of Mrs. Secrest, helped plant a rhododendron to signify the beginning of the garden as Dr. Oliver D. Diller, curator of the Arboretum, looked on approvingly.
"This garden will serve as an inspiring place of beauty and repose, an oasis in a frantic and cluttered world," David G. Leach of Brookville, Pa., told the group. Mr. Leach is chairman of the Great Lakes Chapter's display garden committee.
"It will serve," he said, "as a source for grace of spirit, as a demonstration for home owners, as an asset to the nurserymen of the state, as a focus for research, as an economic asset to the community, as a source of pollen for rhododendron hybridizers, as a source for the dissemination of rare and superior rhododendrons to professional growers."
Others taking part in the ceremony included M. Robert Fenton of Pittsburgh, Pa., landscape architect for the garden, and E. M. Stroombeck, President of the Great Lakes Chapter.
