2005-November

Brian Minter was presented with the BCLNA’s top honour at this year’s President’s Reception and Awards Banquet, for long years of exemplary service to the association and the green industry.  In response to a standing ovation, Minter expressed his appreciation and encouraged members to continually innovate, improve, and “be outrageous” in order to achieve their goals.

His philosophy has certainly netted results. Minter adds this award to a laundry list of kudos that includes the Spirit of Enterprise Award from the Rolex Society of Geneva, the Order of Canada 1990, BC’s Small Business Excellence Award 1989, Canadian Horticultural Science Award 1998, and ‘Fellow’ designation, from the Garden Writer’s Association of America. He has also been cited in the BC Almanac Book of Greatest British Columbians (Forsythe and Dickson, 2005) published just this past October.

Says wife, Faye, of Brian’s success, “[He] is the only person I know who can squeeze 25 hours out of a day, and 8 days out of a week, and have a lot of fun doing it.”.

And Faye should know. She and Brian have shared the building of their spectacular Minter Gardens, celebrating its silver anniversary this year, and have been owners of Chilliwack’s Country Garden Store since 1975.

In addition to the daily operation of these two going concerns, Brian has raised the profile of BC’s green industry as a garden columnist for various Lower Mainland newspapers and as host of open-line radio shows on CBC and AM 600. Brian has promoted BC’s garden and “garden tourism” image to an international crowd through countless speaking engagements, through his work as regional director of the Garden Writers Association of America, and now as a regular guest on a BBC gardening show.  He has seven gardening videos currently in distribution and his Canadian Best Seller, New Gardening Guide (1998), is in its third printing.

“For a workaholic,” comments Faye, “he’s not a bad guy.”

Source: HortWest Magazine, BC Landscape & Nursery Association

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