One for the rhodo: Captain Dick Steele, Nova Scotia's famed plantsman, has travelled the world in pursuit of rhododendrons.

IT'S A COLOUR PASSION PLAY that Captain Dick Steele has eagerly awaited for nearly all of his 87 springs. The first act comes in February, when the deep winter green leaves of the Hinoki false cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa) yield the stage to the white buds of the Japanese pieris as they add their brilliance to the fading snow. The snow melts and heath blooms speckle the garden floor along Rhododendron Lane, followed soon after by witch hazel and the early dogwoods. By May, the stars of the garden have dressed for the show--the magnolias and dwarf rhododendrons, to be joined in June by a chorus of large rhododendrons, azaleas, lilacs and a brace of Chinese dogwoods. It's summer again in Bayport, Nova Scotia.

The love of this annual performance developed early in Captain Steele. His first garden was natural and untended--the woodland that sprawled around his family summer home in Kingston, New Brunswick. Dick was four or five when he started his botany lessons. Instructed by his grandmother, his mother and the old family cook, he learned to recognize the plants of the forest--wild hops, …