RIP IBS - comments
Jane McGary (Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:02:25 PDT)

John Wickham wrote

For several years I urged and offered formal proposals to the North
American Rock Garden Society to begin efforts to merge with some
small, specialist plant groups that were moribund or already defunct,
suggesting "interest groups" similar to those included in the Alpine
Garden Society. There was never any action on these proposals, even
though leading members of a couple of the small groups thought it was
a good idea. Most specialist plant societies are experiencing decline
as their membership ages and young people don't come in to replace
those who depart (one way or another). The PBS is too small a group
to organize separate subgroups, but this discussion list allows us to
focus on topics of interest to us and quickly pass over those that are not.

Certainly the PBS's BX is a wonderful resource and the society owes
Dell Sherk a tremendous debt of gratitude for his work on it. Those
of us who grow most of our plants from seed have an easier (though
slower) time acquiring new species, but many people don't have the
patience to do this and can get a lot of interesting material from
the BX at very reasonable cost.

I think one of the main reasons the IBS declined, aside from
personalities, was that it focused on the publication of Herbertia, a
scholarly journal that was, no doubt, troublesome to edit and
expensive to print. Herbertia published much valuable material over
the years and I treasure the few issues I acquired as a member of
IBS. I quit because my high annual dues were not generating even
annual issues of Herbertia.

Jane McGary
Portland, Oregon, USA