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The Victoria GAZETTE

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by Sue Orsen/The Victoria Gazette

         The new Director of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is “a local boy,” as they say.  And with his recent rise to local prominence -- he takes the reigns officially on September 16th -- everyone lays claim to Peter Moe, including Victoria.

         Pete was a Victoria Lion for 20 years -- It was reported in the Gazette in 1992 that he won a 10-speed bike at a Lions Tournament Raffle -- and he was a member of the Lake Auburn Moravian Church in Victoria for a half dozen or so years.  His longtime address is Excelsior but that longtime home is in the city limits of Chanhassen, on Minnewashta Parkway, part of which lies in the city limits of Victoria.

         But it is the Arboretum that lays most claim to the man with a heart for horticulture.  The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum  has been part of Pete Moe’s life for more than 40 years.  He began there as a Student Gardener in 1973 and even lived on site.  The old cabin (photo above) that Pete called home still stands at the Arboretum and reminds him of his humble beginnings.

         “I lived in Dr. Berens’ cabin for one year,” said Pete.  “In the summer it was like the State Fair with all the traffic.  In the winter, it was serene and peaceful.”

         He said that Dr. Herbert Berens and his family lived in Excelsior and often “traveled” to this family cabin in the woods.  Rehabilitated in 2000, it is the only structure remaining from the Arboretum’s original 160-acre property.

         Pete’s job as a Student Gardener did not require private office space.  “I mostly pulled weeds, cut down elm trees, and built rock walls,” he said.  “I was going to school and I worked here after school.  It functioned as an internship, although it wasn’t defined that way.  There was a very small full time crew at that time.  Mostly we were university students.”

         And so, at a young age, Pete had stepped into the garden and found his heart for horticulture.  The beat got stronger as time went on.  Despite his rise to the top, he remains a humble horticulturist.

***

         Peter Moe was born on June 6th, 1953, the second of three children of Bob and Carolyn Moe of Richfield, MN.  His older brother is David.  Kathy is the younger sister.  Mr. Moe worked in graphic arts sales.  Mrs. Moe was a school cook.  “But not in my school,” said Pete.  “There were several schools in Richfield back in the 1960s.”

         Were his parents gardeners?  “My mother belonged to the Bachelor Buttons Garden Club,” he replied.  “My dad mostly did the lawn.”

         Pete’s favorite classes at Richfield High School were biology and electronics.  “I remember everybody made a radio,” he said, without commenting on the obvious, that horticulture begins with biology.  While a teenager, he worked at the Lyndale Garden Center in Richfield, “which sold an unbelievable amount of material.”  That job heightened his horticultural pulse.

         Pete graduated from RHS in 1971 and became a student at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul Campus, where he studied Horticultural Science.  Besides the natural inclination, what else led him to that field?  “I got interested in trees mainly because my grandparents had a summer cabin in Wisconsin,” he replied, not needing to explain it was the treed part of the state and not the Wisconsin dairy farms.

         How was he introduced to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum?  “I visited the Arboretum for the first time in 1973, with my mom,” he said.  “She asked if I wanted to go along with her and, unlike what most young people might have said, I said, ‘Yes.’

         “While there, I wandered off to some maintenance workers and asked them if they ever had any job openings.  They said, ‘Yes.  As a matter of fact, a guy just quit.’  I told them I was studying Horticultural Science and they said I could start the next morning.  I came in the next morning at 8 o’clock, and I came in at 8 o’clock today.”

         The new Director of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum smiled at the sameness of his daily start time, not to mention the same employer and locale.

 

The rest of the story is in the paper edition of the Gazette.  More is also located in Sue’s Album:  With Peter Moe at the Arboretum.

September 2016