It is with sadness that I have to report the untimely passing of Ton Friesen of De Smallekamp in the Netherlands.
Ton was one of the first people I was lucky to contact when we started searching for different walnuts cultivars to trial here, a friendly postive and helpful man Ton was always very supportive of what we were trying to do here.
He held a Dutch National Collection of Carya but also has a large collection of all juglans and especially Juglans regia cultivars, many of our first trial varieties came from Ton.
Of course we ended up taking lots of Pecans & Hickories as well as all the other walnut species and our trees here are legacy in part to Ton.
As I understand it he was in the process of trying to get Arboretum status for his site to protect it’s genetic legacy from development in the future, as far as I know there is literally no where else in Europe with the range of Carya cultivars and species.
He is survived by his wife Marjolijn who lives in a community on the nursery site.