In Memoriam: Desmond Muirhead
Clive L. Justice, MSc, FCSLA

Desmond Muirhead died from a cardiac arrest on May 2, 2002, at his home in Newport Beach, California; he was 79. In 1955, Desmond was the initiator and moving force in the founding of the Vancouver Chapter of the American Rhododendron Society and was the chapter's first president. He was founder of the first Vancouver landscape architectural design firm, Desmond Muirhead and Associates Landscape Architects. Through his garden designs in the 1950s he introduced many British Columbia, Georgia Basin, gardeners to the beauty and suitability of rhododendrons and deciduous azaleas as the shrubs for the coastal garden. Desmond was a friend of the late Jock Brydon and was largely responsible in firing the fifty-year interest and passion for the genus by the writer.

Since the 1970s Desmond Muirhead practiced as a golf course architect and land planning consultant, designing and building very avant-garde golf courses in Japan, the US south and the United Arab Emirates.