QBARS - v18n4 The Hardgrove Rhododendrons

The Hardgrove Rhododendrons

A charter member of The American Rhododendron Society, Mr. Donald Hardgrove, has recently sold his property at Merrick, Long Island, N.Y. and purchased a hunting and fishing lodge in Montana. Although Mr. Hardgrove has been breeding rhododendrons for some 25 years it did not seem very practical to take his collection to Montana.

A story in the Daily Home News of New Brunswick, N.J. states that the Hardgrove collection of plants has been purchased by Kordus Nursery of Jamesburg, N.J. Mr. Kordus, a native of Warsaw, Poland, has had an exciting life, fighting the Nazis, captured by the Russians, escape through south eastern Europe to France, fighting the Nazis again with the Free French, capture again by the Germans, again escape, this time across southwestern Europe to Gibralter. After the war he was for a time in South America, working as a jeweler. While working as a jeweler in New York, after coming to this country in 1947, he also operated a nursery at Huntington, L. I. He started his nursery in New Jersey about four years ago.

Mr. Kordus began his work with rhododendrons many years ago on his father's nursery in Warsaw. We shall expect to hear more about the Hardgrove varieties in the years to come.