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North Van magnolia tree charts years of friendship

Look past the precipitation of spring in North Vancouver and appreciate the beauty of magnolias in bloom, against a backdrop of rain-given green. One magnolia has a new home, thanks to two families who share a love of plants.
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Look past the precipitation of spring in North Vancouver and appreciate the beauty of magnolias in bloom, against a backdrop of rain-given green.

One magnolia has a new home, thanks to two families who share a love of plants. Its name is Hodgson’s Memory.

Hodgson’s Memory started life as a gift. About 20 years ago, Alleyne Cook gave his friend and fellow gardener, Don Hodgson, a seedpod from Cook’s Magnolia sprengeri ‘Diva.’  

As the tree grew, Cook, a world renowned plantsman, observed that it was different. “This magnolia was unusual in that it grew upright. The problem with most magnolias with a fastigiate (upright) habit,” says Cook, “is that after a few years they tend to grow out of it, reverting to the more common horizontal growth. We thought the vertical growth of this magnolia, if it continued, would be useful in neighbourhood gardens.”

It takes time for a new plant variety to get to the point where it can be available commercially. This one is at the stage where Cook had the confidence in the stability of its features to give it a name, and he chose to name it after his gardening friend, Don Hodgson. Hodgson’s Memory is being cultivated by Reimer’s Nurseries in Chilliwack and will grace gardens here on the North Shore, and, eventually, everywhere.

As time passed, the tree grew, taller and ever taller, generating a bounty of pink flowers on vertically growing branches every spring. Twenty years later, the Hodgson’s tree has reached a height of about 10 metres. Every April, along with the magnolias on the North Shore, including its mother tree, Diva, Hodgson’s Memory comes into glorious vertical bloom.

The friendship between the two families has even deeper roots. Don and Joan Hodgson moved into their home in 1970, and raised their three children, Valerie, Andrew and Melissa. Alleyne and Barbara Cook and their two children, Briar and Nigel, had lived in their home, formerly the office of a logging company, since 1962.

“We knew one another from the church and from around the neighbourhood,” recalls Barbara Cook. “One morning there came a knock on the door. It was our neighbour, Joan Hodgson, with a request.”

Joan takes up the story: “I knew Barbara had been a help to other mothers in our neighbourhood. I got up my nerve and went over to the Cook’s one morning. I told Barbara that I was going into the hospital to have a baby and asked if she would make breakfast for our two children.”

Each morning, until mother and child returned home, Barbara made a big pot of porridge and carried it, along with her children, to the Hodgson’s for breakfast. Thus the friendship began.

Years passed. Don Hodgson retired from teaching math and Latin at West Vancouver’s Hillside Secondary and took up gardening. In the way of plant-people everywhere, the Cooks and the Hodgsons shared plants and cuttings over the years. One of Alleyne’s gifts launched a business in the Hodgson back yard, Westview Nursery.

“I dumped off three clumps of hostas on Don’s lawn. This was before hostas were even thought of as a garden plant, but we were growing them at Stanley Park. ‘What do I do with these,’ Don asked. You plant them, cultivate them, divide them and deliver them to local nurseries.” Hostas from Dykhof Nursery or from Capilano Nursery (now GardenWorks) were very likely grown in Don’s backyard nursery.

When Don passed away in 2007, daughter Valerie took over the garden until the time came last fall when Joan decided to downsize. “We knew the house would be a teardown because it’s on a 66-foot lot.

“That’s just the way it is these days. With densification, there will be two houses on this lot, and the garden will be gone.”

Joan and Valerie wanted the plants to go to good homes, but what to do with their beautiful magnolia?

Enter the City of North Vancouver.

“While the city doesn’t accept donated plants and trees, we made an exception, as this particular Magnolia is rare, has an interesting history and is an excellent specimen. We’ve found an ideal location where the community can enjoy this beautiful tree,” says Dave Turner, the city’s project manager for parks.

The move took considerable planning over about six months.

This is the largest tree moved by the City of North Vancouver, and some effort was required even to find a tree spade with a capacity equal to the task of digging it up. City plant experts, urban arborists and operations staff were certainly equal to the task.

As Turner notes, Hodgson’s Memory, which was planted on the first day of spring, already looks like it’s been in its new home, at Ray Perrault park on Grand Boulevard, for its entire life.

The Hodgson and Cook children grew up playing in the gardens in their own backyards. As North Vancouver densifies, parks will become increasingly important for recreation and for people to experience nature.

Hodgson’s Memory began as a gift from one plant lover to another. Thanks to the co-operative and generous vision of friends, neighbours and the city, its new life in a park is a gift that will keep on giving to the community of North Vancouver for generations to come.

Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. Contact her at 778-279-2275 or e-mail her at lander1@shaw.ca.