Alleyne and Barbara Cook are downsizing.
They have no plans to leave their home, it's simply time to give some of their treasures a new place where they can be appreciated by future generations. More than 100 rhododendrons and azaleas, each a botanical rarity, have been transferred from their garden to the Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden in Sechelt. Alleyne's floral slides, an invaluable photo record of England's post-war gardens, are now at the Royal Horticultural Society's Lindley Library. Barbara's contributions to the University of British Columbia's Beaty Biodiversity Museum, among them a rare intact paper nautilus, will find their way into the museum's schools program.
Throughout her life, and in her travels around the globe, from the Gobi desert to Oregon's Umpqua River, Barbara observed the natural world and found it beautiful in every regard.
"If people would only see," Barbara says, tapping her fingers on her eyeglasses for emphasis, "the natural glories of our world, of everything."
She lists animals, trees, bones, rocks, shells and fossils until Alleyne adds, "and husbands," producing another burst of the laughter that is their daily companion.
Barbara was raised deep in the New Zealand countryside, the daughter of a sheep farmer. When the Depression came, the family had to "walk off the farm," uprooted into years of poverty.
"Mother and dad respected and loved all people," she says, "and always kept an open house during those hard times."
The family landed in the small town of Woodville, which seemed a big place to a girl from the backcountry. School opened up the world even more. Barbara made a scrapbook of the places she intended to visit, Canada among them. At 16, she went to work as a telephone operator for the railroad.
"How marvelous for Barbara," she laughs, "a job with two weeks of free travel every year."
Her savings paid for training as a Karitane infant care nurse, which would give her freedom to travel.
Just three hours away, in New Plymouth, Alleyne was working in a plant nursery, beginning a horticultural journey that would bring him an international reputation as an informed and generous plantsman. In 1950, after saving for three years to earn the fare, Alleyne left New Zealand for England where he would work in, and visit, nurseries and gardens all over the country, building his expertise in rhododendrons, azaleas and magnolias. The travelling Kiwis met aboard the ocean liner Rangitata, bound for England: he to work as a nurseryman, and she to work as an infant care nurse in private homes. Connected by a love of travel and the natural world, they would meet twice a year for the next four years, sharing their travel plans every spring and their travel stories every autumn. Packing rucksacks and lodging in youth hostels, Alleyne bicycled while Barbara hitchhiked and walked, their paths never crossing on their travels through Europe.
Alleyne considered the West Coast of B.C. to be the ideal climate for his type of garden. He moved on to Vancouver and a gardening job with the school board.
Barbara returned to New Zealand and to Australia, where she worked as a copywriter with one memorable assignment: a speech for Australia's prime minister. They corresponded until Barbara joined him in 1961, realizing her childhood dream to visit Canada.
With this meeting, the two friends knew that love was in bloom. They married and set up
house in a former logging company office in North Vancouver. Here they raised their two children and set about creating a garden of their own.
Today, Alleyne's inspired plantings can be found in the Ted and Mary Greig Garden at Stanley Park and in public gardens across the Lower Mainland. Two creations close to his heart, Magnolia "Barbara Cook" and Magnolia "Briar," named for their daughter, can be found in these gardens and they have pride of place in the family "garden of perpetual loveliness."
Inside Barbara and Alleyne's home, among the maps, photographs and relics that commemorate their travels is a marble sculpture by North Vancouver's Michael Binkley. Alleyne commissioned The Owl and the Pussycat, inspired by Edward Lear's poem, for Barbara's 90th birthday, coming up next year. "That sculpture says everything about my life with Alleyne," says Barbara.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
