Bertrand H. Farr

Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, p.319; 1924

BERTRAND H. FARR

Bertrand H. Farr died at his home in Wyomissing, Pa., on October 11th, only a few days after a sudden apoplectic stroke and only three days preceding his sixty-first birthday. Death has thus removed a leader in the field of American floriculture; one whose work and accomplishments have been conspicuously noteworthy.

Mr. Farr was born in Vermont. At an early age he moved with his parents first to Wisconsin and then into Iowa. He attended public schools in Iowa and at the age of twenty went to Boston, Mass., where he studied music for several years. Thereafter for a period of about twenty years he was engaged in business, chiefly that of selling musical instruments. It was this work that at last took him to Reading, Pa., and led to his having a home at Wyomissing.

It is said that when Mr. Farr was a small boy his aunt gave him a peony root which he planted and cared for and that its flowers inspired in him the love for flowers that was so strongly developed in later years. While a student of music in Boston, he spent many hours among the plants of the Hovey gardens. Throughout the years of conducting a music store, flower-growing was his hobby, until in 1910 this hobby became his business and he was happy. This was but a natural development. First his home-garden collection of flowering plants spread over vacant lots until several acres were under cultivation. Then a farm was purchased and the Wyomissing Nurseries Company was established. At the time of Mr. Farr's death the nursery was being removed to a still larger farm nearby. The business had been incorporated and will now be continued by those who were associated with him.

Mr. Farr was widely known as an authority on the peony and the iris. His own collections of these plants were most complete, about thirty acres of land being taken for the irises alone. In his breeding of the iris, several thousand seedlings have been grown, but of these only 36 were considered by him as sufficiently good to be offered for sale in his catalogue of this year. For eight years Mr. Farr was president of the American Peony Society and spent much time at the trial gardens of the Society in the difficult work of systematizing the names of the nearly 3000 varieties.

Mr. Farr has been a frequent visitor at The New York Botanical Garden. He was much interested in all our collections of hardy flowering plants and he gave freely of such plants as the bearded and the Japanese irises to increase the collections and make them more complete. He supplied a complete set of the various day lilies {Hemerocallis) in cultivation for use in the breeding work now under way in our experimental plots. Last summer he inspected the numerous seedlings that were in bloom and arranged to name and distribute some of the best of these.

Perhaps no better statement of the life work and the ambitions of Mr. Farr can be given than that which he himself wrote in the foreword of the firm's catalogue for the present year. His words are, in part, as follows:—

"The title, 'Better Plants — by Farr,' that I have adopted as my business slogan, may impress some, at first, as an egotistical assertion. I do not mean it in that sense; rather it presents an ideal toward which all of us are striving, myself and the faithful associates who have grown and developed with the business here, and who, by their conscientious efforts, have helped me to the success so far achieved. We always tried to do our best, but it is not enough.

"To you, my friends and patrons, I again extend my thanks for allowing me to share with you the joy of gardening. I repeat that, to me, it means life in the fullest sense, and if I can be instrumental in adding ever so little to the beauty and happiness of the world, I feel that life is worth while."

These closing words of the introduction to the last general catalogue which Mr. Farr issued may well be taken as his last personal message to all lovers of flowers. They may well linger in the memories of his friends as expressing the ambition which ruled the life of Bertrand H. Farr.

A. B. Stout.

For more information on historic Irises visit the Historic Iris Preservation Society at http://www.historiciris.org/

-- BobPries - 2015-08-07