American Horticultural Society hands out awards
Liberty Hyde Bailey Award: Pierre Bennerup
Given to an individual who has made significant lifetime contributions to at least three of the following horticultural fields: teaching, research, communications, plant exploration, administration, art, business, and leadership. Named after Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858–1954), horticulturist, educator, author. First awarded in 1958.
Pierre Bennerup has devoted 50 years to elevating and expanding the role of perennial plants in American gardens and in the nursery trade. A graduate of Princeton University in New Jersey, he is a self-taught plantsman who learned through hands-on experience and extensive reading. Since the late 1960s, Bennerup has been CEO and co-owner of Sunny Border Nurseries in Kensington, Connecticut. The wholesale nursery was founded by his father, Robert, in 1929.
Until the 1970s, most perennials were sold as dormant “bare-root” plants. Peers credit Bennerup with coming up with the revolutionary idea to start selling them as live plants in containers. He shared his visionary methods with other growers, which facilitated the production and marketing of a much wider variety of perennials than had previously been available.
Having observed that sharing successful growing and marketing practices helped strengthen the nursery industry, in the 1980s, Bennerup helped to found the Perennial Plant Association (PPA), an influential trade organization that now has members all over the world. He served as the PPA’s president in 1986 and 1987, and received the association’s Award of Merit in 1998. Bennerup was also the founder and first president of the Connecticut Chapter of the Hardy Plant Society and a past president of the Connecticut Horticultural Society. He received the AHS’s Paul Ecke Jr. Commercial Award in 2000.
Over the course of his career, Bennerup has introduced more than 50 new plants through Sunny Border, including the popular and widely grown Dianthus ‘Feuerhexe’ (Firewitch), which he brought back from the Netherlands in 1987; the PPA selected it as its Perennial Plant of the Year in 2006.
Check out the full list of winners here.