QBARS - v27n4 ARS 1974 Annual Meeting

The A.R.S. 1974 Annual Meeting - May 9 -12
Sheraton Motor Inn, Lloyd Center, Portland, Oregon
Molly Grothaus, Lake Oswego, Oregon

It all began in Portland back in 1944 when a little group of rhododendron fanciers founded the American Rhododendron Society. Portland, the Mother Chapter, is planning a Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration for the 1974 Annual Meeting.

The meeting will coincide with the annual Mother's Day show at the Crystal Springs Island Display Garden. The Sheraton Motor Inn in Portland's Lloyd Center has been selected as the official hotel.

Registration will begin on Thursday. On the first program, scheduled for that evening, a panel of hybridists from different regions, including Dr. Edwin C. Brockenbrough, Seattle Chapter; Dr. John Evans, California Chapter; Dr. David Fluharty, Tidewater Chapter and Lewis Bagoly, Valley Forge Chapter, will talk about the hybrids they would like to make.

The Friday and Saturday programs will schedule speakers during the morning. Among these will be Dr. Roy Taylor, director of the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden, who will talk on the Species Foundation; Hadley Osborn on color inheritance, and Dr. Gustav Mehlquist on hybridization.

A loop by bus down the Willamette Valley Friday afternoon will go to the North Willamette Experiment Station of Oregon State University. Work at the 160-acre station, under the direction of Dr. Robert Ticknor, is devoted to horticultural crops. There is a labeled collection of rhododendrons and the container-grown rhododendrons used in the growth regulated experiments can be seen after a year of growing planted in the ground.

At the next stop most of the popular rhododendron varieties commonly used in the West may be seen on the 96 acres of the Klupenger Nursery. Klupenger's sells only budded stock from the field, running around 90,000 plants. This figure does not include greenhouse liners in the two, three and four-year-old sizes. The nursery also has 260,000 square feet in covered area, the largest on the West Coast, in which 250,000 azaleas are produced annually for the green house forcing trade.

Last stop on the Valley loop will be Cecil Smith's beautiful garden. Many of the rhododendrons in this garden are familiar to Bulletin readers because of Cecil's generous pictorial contributions to ARS publications over the years. His two-acre garden, now 23 years old, contains about 200 hybrids, 150 species and 500 seedling crosses still under observation.

At the dinner planned for Friday evening charter members of the ARS will be honored.

Following Saturday morning's speakers, tour buses will leave for the Japanese Garden in Washington Park. The garden, designed by an internationally known authority from Japan, is authentic in every detail from the elaborate entrance gates and ceremonial tea house to the stone pagoda lantern and moon bridge. There are five traditional Japanese garden forms combined here and in several azaleas are used as accents, both for their form and color.

The annual Portland Chapter Rhododendron Show and the garden at Crystal Springs Island will complete the Saturday tour. The show is held in a covered area, designed for staging rhododendron shows, which is a part of the cool house in which tender rhododendrons are grown. Many of the hundreds of rhododendrons in the seven acre garden are at the peak of their bloom each year during the weekend of the show.

Then back to the Sheraton for the annual banquet after which Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cox will talk on the species and hybrids growing in their garden and nursery at Glendoick, Scotland.

Following the success of the Rhododendron Breeder's Roundtable at Pittsburgh last year, Dr. August Kehr is again planning a post meeting daylong session for Sunday, May 12.

More information on this session, the tours and the complete schedule of speakers will be included in the January 1974 Quarterly Bulletin.