Sir Peter Henry Berry Otway Smithers died at his home in Switzerland on 8 June 2006.  He was 92.  His wife and constant companion for more than 62 years, and also my mother Dojean, died suddenly some six months earlier in the early hours of 30 December 2005.  Dojean was 89.

Peter was the quintessential Renaissance man.  In addition to being a Father he was variously an academic, barrister, wartime intelligence officer (Paris with Ian Fleming, followed by Washington and Mexico and Central America), district councilor, member of parliament, British representative to the United Nations General Assembly and Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

In retirement he was a frequent contributor to the letters pages of The Times and other newspapers.  Peter was also a sportsman, and a musician.  His hobbies and interests were varied.  For the most part they endured several years and were then summarily discarded when his interest started to wane.  Included at different times were the collecting of eighteenth-century books (having completed The Life of Joseph Addison, a book that remains the definitive book on Addison, he had turned to writing a book on the life of Queen Anne).  There were also gold coins, Vuitton luggage, Faberge, and, until they were inadvertently boiled by Dojean, tropical fish. While in Strasbourg he became interested in astronomy and celestial navigation.  They too were eventually discarded but not before Peter published several serious articles on both subjects.  And lest the reader doubt Peter’s sporting credentials, he played a serious game of tennis and could bowl a wicked googly.  Peter’s musical interests resided firmly in the period of the Baroque.  He detested Mozart.  There was also a brief love affair with the music of South Asia and Bali.  It is possible that this interest might have been longer- lasting had it not coincided with my American country music period – we shared the single hi-fi system at Wilton Crescent.  It is doubtful that many people know that he played the concertina, indeed there was a memorable afternoon at Itchen Stoke shortly after we arrived in England, when to the delight of my mother and me; Peter danced the Sailor’s Hornpipe while accompanying himself on the concertina.

But his real and lasting passion was horticulture.  This is best described by himself in his autobiographical book The Adventures of a Gardener that was published in 1995.  A revised edition with an additional chapter and photographs was published in Italian (L’avventura di un giardiniere) in 2003.  The Sir Peter and Lady Smithers Foundation hopes, in the not too distant future, to publish a book devoted solely to his photography.  This is something he always talked about doing but never had the time to complete.

Peter is best known for the garden that he created in Vico Morcote.  While Peter acknowledged the importance of the garden, his real passion was flowers.  The garden, for Peter, simply provided the place in which individual plants grew.  His love of horticulture took root when he was all of five years old and continued unabated throughout his life.  He dabbled with flowers and gardens whenever the circumstances permitted.  It was only when he retired from the Council of Europe in 1969 and moved to Switzerland at the invitation of the President of Switzerland, that he had the time to create what he considered to be the perfect garden.  Peter and Dojean bought an abandoned vineyard above Lake Lugano in the village of Vico Morcote and there they built a villa that spanned a mountain stream.  The new home became Waterfall Plaza.  It was to be their home for the rest of their respective lives.  Peter painstakingly transformed the south-facing vineyard into a garden that became known internationally.  In the garden that covers a little more than two acres there grew were some 10,000 plants, none of them duplicates.  Included were 150 types of magnolias, as well as Japanese and deciduous azaleas, rhododendrons, peonies, acers, gardenias, wisterias, nerines and iris.  So spectacular was the garden that in 2001 it was awarded the prestigious Schulthess Prize, an award given annually for being the best garden in Switzerland.  The garden at Waterfall Plaza also came to be listed among the 500 great gardens of the world in the book of the same name.

Peter had always been an avid photographer: indeed while assigned as the British Naval Attaché to Mexico and Central America, where his professional responsibilities were related to determining whether or not U-boats were being refueled within the area for which he was responsible, he crisscrossed Mexico on an almost continuing basis and managed to photograph virtually all of Mexico’s colonial churches.  In 1980 he presented his collection of early Kodak colour slides to the government of Mexico, and was duly decorated by the Mexican Government.

Some years after he retired Peter and Dojean were in Florida for Christmas.  A local photographer happened to see some of his pictures that were being processed at a laboratory in Palm Beach.  The photographer sought Peter out and encouraged him to pursue his photography more seriously.  Ultimately his photography received no less than seven Gold Medals from the Royal Horticultural Society as well as the Society’s Grenfell Medal. Peter had a series of one-man shows in the United States, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Italy.

Peter’s photographs are in many instances breath-taking.  There were, he used to point out, other photographers who too specialized in the photography of flowers.  The difference was not that his photography, equipment, or technique was any better; the difference was that he personally knew his subjects having, as in the case of his various hybrids, he created them.