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.