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We Won't Forget You, Mark

© Carol Wallace

I feel like a fraud, attempting to write anything for this Rose Garden topic, because I will never have one fifth of the knowledge that Mark Whitelaw brought to this topic. Every spring I find myself frantically rereading his past articles, to make sure that I am pruning right and training things correctly. Many of us have better and more beautiful rose gardens because of Mark, and it is fitting that this topic has been renamed to reflect that. It is even more fitting that his topic will remain, to allow us all to access his valuable work.

I first met him when I was doing a series of my own on Old Garden Roses. While surfing for links, I kept finding truly wonderful articles that perfectly fit my topic. They were all written by Mark Whitelaw. When I sent him his little "Suite 101 featured site" logo, I mentioned that it would be nice if he write rose articles for us himself, rather than just having me paraphrase him every week. I had never been so certain that I had found a good potential editor. But with typical humility, Mark insisted on an audition. And of course, he passed with flying colors.

My husband is not much for being on-line, but he knew of Mark, because I always referred to him as "you know - the editor who knows everything and explains it so we all can understand."

Mark was once a chef, and delighted in creating recipes using roses as an ingredient. In fact, he created a special salad just for his debut at Suite 101, and you can see other recipes popping up in subsequent articles.

He hadn't been here long when he came up with the idea of a rose workshop. Once again, his humility amazed me. He offered to invite some "experts" to come in and run the workshop - and I dutifully checked them out, but came back, as I knew I would, saying, "We'd rather have you." That workshop is still available on line, and is an incredibly valuable reference - two weeks worth of daily articles (and he didn't get weekends off!) plus a lot of discussion ranging from incredibly involved questions to a few easy ones. It didn't matter if a question had been asked a thousand times before. Mark's replies always were thorough and patient, and leavened with humor.

His wife Laura tells me that he retained that sense of humor right up to the end.

The copyright of the article We Won't Forget You, Mark in Rose Gardening is owned by Carol Wallace. Permission to republish We Won't Forget You, Mark in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.