Rash's Surname Index

Notes for John Casper WISTER
Dr. John C. Wister was the first director of Tyler Arboretum (1946-1968). He was a member of a prominent Philadelphia area family, which included the 18th century physician Caspar Wister, after whom the wisteria was named. Dr. Wister developed the concept of the Arboretum as it is today, maintaining both cultivated and natural areas. He planned and laid out such features as the cherry, lilac, magnolia, rhododendron, and crabapple collections, as well as the Pinetum and trail system.

While Dr. Wister was director at Tyler, he was also the first director of what is now the Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore College. This dual role gave Dr. Wister the unique opportunity to complement his research at Scott using the extensive natural areas of Tyler for planting and observing specimens. His annual reports indicate that at one time Tyler held an extensive collection of both herbaceous and woody peonies, and one of the most important daffodil collections in the area.

The early years were devoted to clearing areas intended for planting. In the early 1950s Dr. Wister produced a plan of the "Wister Loop," a circular trail linking the collections of lilacs, crabapples, cherries and magnolias. In 1952, Dr. Wister described his vision, "The varieties were most carefully chosen, and are believed to be the finest in existence at the present time. Given five or ten years of good growth and a minimum of care, they should make this portion of the grounds a beauty spot unsurpassed in any public garden."

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - December 29, 1982
Deceased Name: OBITUARIES - JOHN CASPAR WISTER, KNOWN AS THE DEAN OF HORTICULTURE IN U.S.
By Burr Van Atta
Inquirer Staff Writer
John Caspar Wister, 95, one of the most important figures in horticulture, died Monday at his home in Swarthmore.
Internationally known for his work, he had great effect on horticulture and horticulturists, both here and abroad.
Author, editor, lecturer, he spent his life in the profession. For more than 70 years, he traveled the world, working with authorities and horticultural societies. He was also active in most major scientific and conservation groups.
A member of a wealthy family that has been prominent in the Philadelphia area for centuries, Mr. Wister was the brother of Owen Wister, the author of The Virginian, the prototype of Western novels.
Mr. Wister's work in horticulture brought recognition. Results of his research in cross-breeding produced hundreds of new, hybrid species of common plants and flowers, and his articles and books won him an impressive array of honors from professional and civic organizations.
Much of his work was conducted from the Swarthmore College campus. Associated with the college for more than a half-century, he made his home on the campus.
His effect on the campus will be visible for years. As director of the Arthur Hoyt Scott Horticultural Foundation, he transformed the college into something of a botanical wonderland.
At the time of his death, he was director emeritus of the Horticultural Foundation and director emeritus of the Tyler Arboretum in Lima, Delaware County.
A man known for a rapier wit and an impish grin, he often succeeded in confounding his interviewers. One of their common questions asked the identity of his favorite flower. He often told different interviewers different flowers in answer to that question, but if pressed on the favorite he had just selected, he would suggest that he thought little of any other flower.
Finally, at the age of 93, he owned up to the fact that he liked all flowers and that his real favorite was "whatever is blooming, and that changes from day to day."
On the day of that confession in 1980, day lillies, hundreds of them, were blossoming in profusion around his home on the southern edge of the campus. So his favorite that day was the day lily.
There were "only a couple of hundred" varieties of lily in his garden, he conceded, adding that there had been a time when "I was crazier than usual and had over 600 varieties. . . . I had to clear them out. As I kept taking them out, I started to cry. They're wonderful things. It was heartbreaking to tear them up."
His work on campus was directed toward providing a practical garden, one with hardy plants that could be grown by anyone in a climate like that of Eastern Pennsylvania without special care.
Comprehensive collections of woody and herbaceous plants accumulated during his tenure, winning the college a national reputation for its displays.
For his work, Swarthmore awarded him an honorary doctor of science degree in 1942.
His love of growing things, he said, was implanted in him when he was a youngster on his parents' 10-acre "farm" in Germantown, now Wister Woods Park just off Belfield Avenue at La Salle College's campus.
He liked to recall the groundskeeper on the estate, who had been a drummer boy with the Union Army in the Civil War and was, he said, a fascinating character. Young Wister followed him about, listening to his stories, getting in the way, and learning.
"I found out you planted peas early and corn late. When I studied them later, I was ahead of the rest of the boys on those plants," he recalled.
He went on to Harvard University and graduated in 1909. Then he enrolled in Harvard's School of Landscape Architecture and followed that with courses at the New Jersey Agricultural College.
Mr. Wister served in France with the Army in World War I and returned to the United States after an extensive tour of the great gardens of the continent and of England.
He practiced landscape architecture here and in Europe, building a reputation as the dean of American horticulturists. Through the years, he was closely affiliated with groups that included the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the American Rose Society, the John Bartram Association, and the American Daffodil and the American Iris Societies.
The campus honored him for his contributions, most recently by naming its new solar-power greenhouse for him.
He returned the honor by reworking by the tree-, shrub- and flower-filled slope that drops away from the back of his home toward the bank of Crum Creek.
He saw to it that the plants were labeled and that paths built throughout the greensward were stablized. Abounding in rhododendron, magnolias, azaleas, crab apples, lilacs, flowering dogwood, oaks, black gums and hickory trees, it became an outdoor classroom as well as a park.
"I planted that hillside," he said with some pride. "When we came here in 1948, it was all poison ivy and brambles."
A gentle, quiet, self-effacing man who lived for his work, he married Gertrude McMasters Smith in 1960, a noted horticulturist in her own right who joined him in his work as assistant director of both the Scott Foundation and the Tyler Arboretum.
Through the years, he had held a variety of titles. He was consulting director of the Ewing Park Lilac Arboretum in Des Moines, Iowa, from 1948 to 1952. He was chief planner for the Garden Center at the Toledo Zoo.
He helped found the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta in 1940 and served as the association's president in 1954-'55. He also served on its board of directors, which presented him with its award of excellence in 1970.
In 1966, he received the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Medal for distinguished service to horticulture, and in the same year, the Royal Horticultural Society of Great Britain dedicated its Daffodil and Tulip Yearbook to him, the first time such an honor had been extended to an American.
He held gold medals from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the Garden Club of America, the American Daffodil Society, and the American Rhododendron Society.
His books added to his stature. They were The Iris, Four Seasons in Your Garden, Lilac Culture, and Bulbs for American Gardens. He was also the editor of Plants and Gardens, the publication of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and he edited Lilacs for America, The Peonies, and The Woman's Home Companion Garden Book.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be scheduled later.
Copyright (c) 1982 The Philadelphia Inquirer
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