The Magazine of the Arnold Arboretum - Arnoldia - Harvard University

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4 Arnoldia 68/1 Early History of the Scott Arboretum In 1929, John Caspar Wister was appointed the first director of the Arthur Hoyt Scott Horticultural Foundation (now the Scott Arboretum). Wister graduated in 1909 with a degree from the School of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University, and supplemented this education with courses taken at the New Jersey Agricultural College. After graduation, Wister worked in landscape architecture offices in both Philadelphia and New York. From his youth, John Wister was an avid plant collector. As a small boy he had exposure to estate gardening at different Wister properties located in and around Germantown, Philadelphia. At age 14 he grew 40 cultivars of chrysanthemums. After Wister started his professional career his interest in a myriad of plant groups and genera began to grow. Throughout his lifetime he was an avid collector of both herbaceous and tree peonies. Wister admired a photograph in a garden catalog that showed the peony collection of Arthur Hoyt Scott (for whom the Arboretum is named) and Edith Wilder Scott and in 1913 he met the Scotts at their home in Oak Lane, Philadelphia. On July 10, 1917, at the age of 30, Wister enlisted as a private in World War I. Wister was sent to France. On his leave time during the war Wister toured the gardens of Europe. While in France he collected several cultivars of tree peonies and sent the plants back to Mr. and Mrs. Scott. Wister was honorably discharged in 1919. Arthur Hoyt Scott was a graduate of the class of 1895 from Swarthmore College. His father, E. Irvin Scott, founded Scott Paper Company which was located in Chester, just south of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Like Wister, Scott developed a passion for ornamental horticulture as a young man. In 1920 he became president of the Scott Paper Company, but his spare time was primarily occupied by his love of plants. Scott served as an officer of the American Peony Society and the American Iris Society. As early as 1915 Scott was sending gifts of plants to his alma mater, Swarthmore College. His first gift was 100 lilacs of many different varieties. In 1919 the Scotts moved from Philadelphia to a 100-acre farm in Rose Valley near Swarthmore. As Wister later wrote “Here for the first time he had ample room. He at once began to plant great collections of flowering trees and shrubs like Japanese cherries, crabapples, dogwoods, lilacs, mockoranges and azaleas.” When Arthur Hoyt Scott wanted to study peonies he had to travel to Cornell University and when he wanted to see lilacs he had to go to Highland Park in Rochester, New York. Scott dreamed of having an arboretum at Swarthmore College where local gardeners could go and see attractive displays of his favorite plants. Scott had the support of Samuel Palmer, the head of the Botany Department, and Swarthmore College. Palmer, in turn, contacted Robert Pyle who had graduated from Swarthmore in 1897 and was serving on Swarthmore’s board of managers. Pyle was head of the Conard-Pyle Company, one of the country’s largest purveyors of mail-order roses.
Magnolias at the Scott Arboretum 5 Archives of the Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College John C. Wister (second from right) at the dedication of the Scott Arboretum’s rose garden in 1958. Wister was director of the Scott Arboretum from 1929 to 1969. Arthur Hoyt Scott died in 1927, at the age of 51. Two years later Edith Wilder Scott and Arthur Hoyt Scott’s sister, Margaret Moon, and her husband, Owen Moon, approached Swarthmore’s president with the idea of starting a campus arboretum. They recommended that John Wister become its first director, and so indeed he did. The early 1930s were the heydays of the Scott Horticultural Foundation. With Wister at the helm, the plant collections grew very quickly. Huge collections of Paeonia, Iris, Rhododendron, Syringa, Philadelphus, Prunus, Malus, Cotoneaster, Chrysanthemum, Narcissus and Magnolia were being accessioned and planted. In 1931 the Foundation accessioned 783 plants; in 1932 there were 1162 accessions, and in 1933, 1110 accessions. To put this in perspective the Scott Arboretum currently accessions about 300 plants per year.
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