North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[sherwin <sherwindu@att.net>]

On 1/6/2012 7:16 PM, david.maxwell@dal.ca wrote:
> Nick has apparently decided to quit.  His property, with trees, beasts, and 
> beautiful house is
> advertised for sale.  This raises a significant question, which harkens back 
> to a posting I
> made a week or two ago:  what is going to happen to his collection, which is 
> billed as "the
> largest private collection in the Milky way".  He has something in the order 
> of 4000 cultivars.
> Compare this with the Geneva repository, who apparently have about 1500.  
> That is, there
> are about 2500 cultivars in Nick's orchard that do not even exist in the 
> official government
> germplasm repository.  With luck somebody will buy Nick's place who will 
> maintain the
> collection.  But there is a real risk that some rich developer or something 
> could buy it and
> bulldoze the whole thing, with the loss of all this material.
    It would be interesting to see even a partial list of the more 
interesting varieties Nick has.

   Someone should approach whatever State he lives in for interest in 
making it a state park.  Also,
   a nearby university may want to take it over.

                                                  Sherwin Dubren