Remembering Joel Fry

Joel Fry, curator of Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, died on March 21. Joel spoke at our SGHS annual meeting in Jacksonville in 2018.  

Joel studied the lives and work of John and William Bartram. John Bartram was an American horticulturist and plant explorer whom Carl Linnaeus called “the greatest natural botanist in the world.” Bartram’s son, William, traveled by foot and by boat through the American Southeast from the Carolinas to Louisiana in the 1770s, exactly 250 years ago, leaving a body of art and writing about the early South that will be studied for centuries. 

Joel Fry was one of the country’s experts on the Bartrams and their work, combining an extraordinary grasp of both history and botany. But even more remarkable was his gentle spirit—his ever-ready response to every inquiry, his desire to share his knowledge and scholarship wherever he was invited.

 I was very fortunate to know Joel over many years. Peggy Davis Coates, longtime director of LSU Hilltop Arboretum, and I went to Philadelphia about ten years ago for a tour of Bartram’s Garden with Joel. When we asked for information about the plants Billy Bartram saw on his travels through Louisiana, Joel sent detailed plant lists and additional references. He was an active member of the Bartram Trail Conference that holds biennial meetings throughout the South, and I spent time with him at several of those get-togethers, most notably in Montgomery, Alabama, where I drove him from site to site since I had a car and he didn’t. 

Joel was a pleasure. Never boastful, always wry, quietly and deeply intelligent, quick to smile. All of us who knew him will miss him very much. 

Joel’s obituary:

https://www.bartramsgarden.org/remembering-joel/

Bartram Trail Conference:

https://bartramtrailconference.wildapricot.org