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At the end of January, Miami lost one of its central characters in the world of horticulture.
Known locally and internationally as the Bamboo Man, Gary Rich made a significant contribution to the botanical beauty and richness of South Florida, from the gardens of the Kampong and Fairchild, where he consulted, to the towering elegant plantings that provide privacy between neighbors’ properties and countless home gardens across the region. He died at age 69, after having been recently hospitalized with a swift and lethal assault of pneumonia as a result of contracting Legionnaire’s disease.
Mr. Rich walked away from his 9 to 5 job in sales in 1999 after becoming hooked on the versatility and beauty of bamboo, the largest member of the grass family. Always fascinated with the esthetics of tropical flora and backyard gardens, in middle-age he developed an obsession, as amateurs who become self-taught experts are known to do, with the variety, appearance and many uses of bamboo throughout the planet. He joined the American Bamboo Society; with a bottomless appetite, he read everything he could find about this ancient grass, the fastest growing woody plant in the world.
In 2000, encouraged by Cindy, his wife and partner in the field, he turned his hobby into a full-time business, opening a nursery on their one-acre home in Pinecrest where he grew thirty varieties of botanical garden quality bamboo plants.
“My specialty is making babies,” he told an interviewer several years ago, referring to the young plants that he propagates. “They are the hottest plants around.”
Within a few years, he became known as a talented cultivator with a global reputation. His client list ranged from the rich and famous, ex-presidents, newspaper publishers, commercial builders, and hundreds of thousands of home-owners. Landscape architects were especially eager for Gary’s plants and expertise, considering hurricane-defying bamboo to be both a spiritual enhancer and beautifying agent.
Before long, community media had labeled Rich the Johnny Appleseed of bamboo, applauding his altruistic approach to his profession, often donating plants to deserving organizations, lecturing and consulting for free. The Richs’ were always donors to organizations dedicated to preserving and protecting tropical gardens.
Far away from the lush environs of South Florida, Gary Rich was born on Pearl Harbor Day, 1951, in St. Louis, and later attended the University of Missouri, receiving a Bachelor of Journalism degree in 1973. In the ensuing years he traveled widely in the Mideast and Indian subcontinent. Back in the States, he financed his wanderings as an itinerant salesman, summering in Alaska and migrating south, an incipient Florida snowbird, as the weather cooled. In Miami he met a college student, Cindy Leider, and married her in 1981. He is survived by Cindy Rich and his two daughters, Jessica and Allison.
Interviewed by Coral Gables Living magazine in 2006, the writer found it impossible to not mention how much Gary Rich loved what he did, and the joy he found engaging with nature on such an intimate level.
“I have a blessed life,” Gary told the magazine, “and I owe a lot of it to bamboos.”
In memory of Gary donations may be made to Support Samar Schools, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of children living in the Samar province of the Philippines. Designated as one of the poorest provinces in Samar Philippines, helping starving children was an important part of Gary’s life.
Support Samar Schools
http://supportsamarschools.org/
5990 SW 130 Terrace
Pinecrest, FL 33156-7169
