On the occasion of his 50th reunion, Blue Ridge School presented Allen Bush ’69 with the Distinguished Alumnus Award, the highest honor the School can give to one of its graduates.
As a student, Bush had a wide variety of interests. He served as a prefect, an acolyte, and a member of the Honor Council. He sang in the choir and was a member of the varsity football, basketball, and track teams.
However, in his professional life, he has earned several accolades for his deep commitment to the cultivation of heirloom perennial seeds. After being educated at Kew Gardens in London, Bush operated his own nursery and catalog, Holbrook Farm, near Asheville, where he was an early pioneer in creating a marketplace for perennial seeds. He later served as the Director of North American Operations for Jelitto, a global leader in the perennial seed market.
In 2014, Bush was profiled in The New York Times’ section “In the Garden.” Writer Michael Tortorello called Bush a “seedsman and raconteur” for his storied seed collection and collection of seed stories. Bush found a home for both his seeds and his engaging prose in the pages of the catalog for Holbrook Farm. Tortorello wrote: “Mr. Bush pitched these unsung plants with wry and entertaining catalog copy. Of a shrubby herbaceous plant, Mr. Bush might write: ‘The truth is, for all its beauty, Caryopteris nepalensis contributes its own, shall we say, ‘distinctive,’ odor when handled. The names of major urban areas — Miami, Cleveland, Pittsburgh — have been mentioned in reference to this smell (folks have never mentioned their own towns).”
In 2005, Bush and his family made a substantial gift to Blue Ridge School to renovate the stage and auditorium, dedicating the space “The DeAngelis Stage, in honor of Frank and Dolores DeAngelis for their love and dedication to the arts and the boys of The Blue Ridge School.”
Bush is a very active civic leader in several causes he loves, including the parks and public spaces of Frederick Law Olmstead in his native Louisville, and for decades here at Blue Ridge School.
The Class of 1969 is a notable group among Blue Ridge School graduates. Allen Bush joins his classmates Jay Jessup and Julian Van Winkle among the few graduates given the honor of Distinguished Alumnus. No other class of Blue Ridge students can make this claim.
