On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA February-March 2016 | Page 24
MEMBER PROFILE
DEB WILEY
PHOTO COURTESY DEB WILEY
A mutual passion for plants:
Elvin McDonald and Kelly Norris
Kelly Norris and Elvin McDonald are kindred spirits when it comes to gardening.
Elvin McDonald and Kelly Norris well remember
the day they met in May 2004. McDonald, at the
time a 67-year-old magazine garden editor and
prolific author, was visiting Rainbow Iris Farm
in southwest Iowa where Norris and his family
grew 7-acres of irises.
“I took the afternoon off school,” remembers
Norris, who was 17 and a junior in high school.
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Kindred souls
McDonald and Norris often continue the
conversation and laughter at the Greater Des
Moines Botanical Garden (GDMBG), where
Norris is director of horticulture and McDonald,
as emeritus botanical educator and ambassador,
volunteers for gardener duties at Norris’
command every Friday morning.
“I was so impressed he was the boss, in a very
natural way,” says McDonald.
Born exactly 50 years and 17 days apart,
McDonald and Norris know they share some
eerie commonalities.
They walked the blooming fields. Norris recalls,
“We stopped by a row of white irises and I talked
about how I wasn’t particularly a fan of white
irises because they always looked like crumpled
tissues on the ends of stems. And he said,
‘You know, Penelope Hobhouse felt the same
way.’ That put me in good company, right?”
At age 14, McDonald founded the American
Gloxinia Society, now The Gesneriad Society.
At 15, Norris talked his family into buying a
Texas iris farm and moving the business to Iowa.
McDonald majored in opera. Norris majored in
horticulture, but immersed himself in classical
music, theater and Broadway musicals.
Then Norris and McDonald, recounting the
experience nearly 12 years later, start laughing
in that joyous way people do when they’re
completely understood.
They both have the middle initial D and share a
penchant for bow ties, books and showmanship.
They’re committed to public gardens, but
nurture a much wider perspective about the role
of horticulture.