Cecil Roy Boutard

New Lebanon – Cecil Roy Boutard died Thursday afternoon, July 1, 2010, at his home in New Lebanon, NY. He was 94 years old and had spent a pleasant afternoon planting flower pots on his deck.
Roy Boutard was the Horticultural Director of the Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, MA, from 1955 to his retirement in 1985. During his tenure, he guided the expansion of the physical gardens and extended the educational mission of the organization. He wrote a regular gardening column for The Berkshire Eagle and had a Saturday morning gardening spot on WBEC radio.
Boutard’s keen sense of design won the Berkshire Garden Center, as it was known then, numerous awards for exhibits at the New York and Boston flower shows. Above all, he was a gardener – happiest splitting a perennial with a fork, pruning back the roses or tending his salad greens.
Born in Västerås, Sweden, in 1916, Boutard spent his childhood in Odense, Denmark. In 1939 he received his diploma in horticulture from the Royal Horticultural Society Gardens in Wisley, England. At Wisley, he met his future wife Sherry. After graduation he and Sherry grew vegetables on their truck farm south of London for nine years. Though Boutard continued to maintain a vegetable garden until his death, his love of ornamentals and house plants drew him back to the nursery business. During this time he wrote Plants Indoors, a book about house plants, which was published in England and the United States.
In 1954, the Boutards emigrated to Canada, where he worked at the Montreal Botanic Gardens, and then to the United States. After a brief stint working at a carnation nursery in Westborough, MA, he was offered the position of Horticultural Director at the Berkshire Garden Center. He was recommended for the position by Thomas H. Everett, the Chief Horticulturist at the New York Botanic Garden, who had read Boutard’s book, and was impressed with his horticultural knowledge and humor.
Boutard was called upon as a judge at local flower shows and fairs as well as at the large regional flower shows in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. His training caught local fruit and vegetable exhibitors off-guard as he always followed the English custom of slicing off a piece to taste it.
After retirement he volunteered at the Center for the Disabled in Albany, NY, in a program organized by the Men’s Garden Club.
Roy Boutard is survived by his wife, Sherry, his daughter, Jenifer Nina Burghardt, his sons, Anthony and John Roger, five grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
A celebration of Roy Boutard’s life will be held at the Berkshire Botanical Garden on July 24 at 5 pm. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that a donation be made to the Berkshire Botanical Garden. Arrangements under the direction of Hall & Higgins Funeral Home of Stephentown.