Bringing Home The Plants
A tribute to a friend, colleague, and plant lover
In 2019 for all the wrong reasons, we found ourselves heading home with a carload …
… and trailer full …
… of beautiful plants.
These were just a tiny percentage of the many plants that our friend and colleague Bernie Barnicoat had packed into his house and garden.
It was a struggle to fit them in, but as plants do, they settled and found their niche. This one …
… took charge of a desk. After a few awkward sessions of working around its spines, we bowed to the inevitable and moved the computer.
This stone aloe …
… found its niche in the outside porch. And this group …
… vied for space on the filing cabinet, pushing aside the umbrellas, a paint tray, and various odds and ends. The Christmas cactus flowered during its first year with us.
Bernie’s expertise was officially in physiology and global health, and having been actively involved in the fight to eradicate polio, he would have had much to say about the covid-19 pandemic. Bernie had a particular talent for making the complex simple — and was actively sought out by colleagues and students alike. In fact, he would so often be asked to explain things, that he took to bringing dry-wipe pens to lunch so he could give impromptu tutorials on paper napkins.
His love of plants was just one side of him. And the several dozen that now live in our house and garden were a vanishingly small fraction of his collection. Bernie would be pleased to know that, two years later, all the plants are in situ, and everything else has moved aside to make room.
