In October 19851 traveled to Scotland to visit gardens for Horticulture, and somewhere deep in the northwestern highlands I found myself at Dundonnell House, the garden of Alan Rogers. Mr. Rogers, I discovered, wasn't there, but he had a houseguest I was even more eager to meet: Christopher Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd, it turned out, was curious to meet me, because a letter I'd written inviting him to contribute to this magazine had just reached him, having been forwarded from Great Dixter, his home in southeast England.

He clearly had doubts about me as editor of a magazine. He prodded me with a number of questions about this “Mr. Cooper,” as if I was an imposter or perhaps his son. Finally he cocked his head to one side, looked across at me, his blue eyes bright, mischievous, and with a hint of challenge, and said, “You're awfully young to be who you are, aren't you?” And then he laughed–at me, at himself, at the awkward scene we'd endured. He could always spot the comedy in a situation and could never resist the opportunity to laugh.

That was the beginning of Christopher's 14-year relationship with Horticulture, during which he contributed 43 articles, on subjects from asters to zinnias. Whether he was discussing climbers, weavers, or plants for punctuation, his voice was crisp, enthusiastic, opinionated. He wrote easily and from long experience, yet his pieces were always fresh.

(He kept careful records of all the topics he wrote about for magazines and newspapers to avoid repeating himself.) Among the plants and ideas he championed in Horticulture were a number that have since become staples of the gardening scene: cannas and dahlias, hot colors, see-through plants (like Verbena bonariensis), bold foliage, and of course, the mixed border, the everything-goes style that he epitomized.

More than the information and ideas he gave us–on the best way to tie twine to a stake (and let it be a straight stake, thick end in the ground) or the different types of silver leaves and their varied effects in a border–he taught us how to think about gardens and gardening. That gardening should be taken seriously but always in fun and without self-importance or fear. That risks are worth taking, mistakes and failures are inevitable, and tomorrow offers another chance to do something new and better. He encouraged gardeners to live on the “frontier of their experience…. It's only those who are afraid of having to admit to mistakes,” he wrote, “who are frightened of making them.”

In 1986, a few months after our meeting in Scotland, Horticulture published Christopher's initial piece, impressions from his first trip to the East Coast of the United States. He was excited by the plants and the plantings he saw, relishing the creative spirits who were “giving the boot” to “lifeless” plantings and chastising institutional plantings that were safe and unchanging.

He ended the piece with characteristic enthusiasm–for the plants and gardens and, equally, for the people: “I met a large number of warm and lively personalities during my short stay, and I was strongly aware of a great forward surge of activity on the gardening front. It was all so stimulating that back home I felt I could accomplish mountains of work myself. It wasn't entirely a figment, either. My pace still seems a little faster than normal.” We could say the same thing about his effect on American gardening. We just wish his stay had been longer.