Hardy Annual

NZ Truth, Issue 1152, 29 December 1927, Page 4

Hardy Annual

IT is not generally known that the city gardener in each of the four

chief centres in the Dominion is a Scot: There is Foster at Auckland, McKenzie at Wellington, Young at Christchurch and Tannock at Dunedin, while another for luck, is McPherson at Invercargill.

But the man who occupies our attention on this occasion is James Young, F.R.H.S., who. is. the man behind the C'hristchurch boast of being the Garden City of New Zealand.

For 20 years, Young has had charge of the botanical gardens, and for years he has looked after the city's parks, reserves and river banks — O' ye banks of Avon!

Amateur critics of the work of Jimmy Young come and go, but the trees and flowers he plants grow on. He has been nearly 50 years a gardener and forester, and it was on March 1, 1878, that, as the son oC a forester, he was apprenticed to his life's work at Craighead Castle in Scotland. •

From there to the Isle of Man and later still to the Victorian (Australia) State Forestry Department went Jimmy, and finally in 1908 ChristcllUTCll claimed him as her own.

He has been here ever since, but long after Young has gone, his work to beautify the city will be his perpetual memorial.