Peter Orum

Submitted in memoriam by his daughter, Christa Orum-Keller

My father, Peter Orum, was born in Denmark in 1941 and came to America in 1965 with little more than a passion for plants and a desire to learn. He had planned to come back after some years and start a nursery in Denmark. He never did. America had other plans for him. Alongside my mother Irma, he built Midwest Groundcovers from the ground up in St. Charles, Illinois, into one of the leading wholesale nurseries in the country. He passed away on October 17, 2024. He loved this country deeply; it gave him everything. The words below are his own, drawn from his memoir, People, Plants, and Politics: A Memoir by Peter Orum. I submit them here as a tribute to him, and as his love letter to America.

— Christa Orum-Keller

An Exciting Life in Horticulture

We don't have much influence on where and to whom we are born, but we do have a lot of influence on what we do with our lives, even from a relatively early age. I was born in the country of Denmark, to a horticulturist father and a mother who came from farming.

This was in 1941, during the Nazi occupation of Denmark in World War II. Shortly after the war, my parents started a small nursery that never grew beyond the original two acres.

This is where I grew up, in a life with plants that had to provide our livelihood. Often that was very meager. There was a lot of love and a lot of teaching, and somehow we all liked those plants. Unfortunately, my father often liked too many that never produced for the livelihood. Since our family could not afford to send me to high school (you paid for that in those days) I was apprenticed out to a nursery in a neighboring town. Here I learned to grow many plants that I never knew about from my father's place. The boss was good; he even grew some plants just so I could learn how to do it!

Later I came to a larger nursery and finished my apprenticeship. This was capped with a year in horticulture school and diploma from there. Being short on education, but with a great desire to learn and some brains, this was like being in heaven for me. This year was one of the best and most formative of my life, even though I had to have a part-time job and borrow money from my aunt to be there.

In those days, young men had a simple choice when they were about 20 and finished with their apprenticeship. They could either enlist in the Army or they were drafted! I enlisted in the Royal Danish Army Corps of Engineers and ended up as an engineer-officer. That became a very valuable experience for me in my later life as a leader and businessman.

In 1965 I came to the U.S.A., to see the world and to learn more about my trade of horticulture. I was fortunate to come to work for Jack Hill at the D. Hill Nursery in Dundee, Illinois. If the horticulture school was my first heaven, this certainly was my second! I came to work with growers and plantsmen from around the World. That was a great experience.

When my wife and I later decided to start our own nursery, we made use of endless things I had learned. The Farm Credit system became our source of money for many years.

We come to many crossroads in life and we must choose which roads to take. We are fortunate if good parents, teachers, and mentors lend us a helping hand in making our own decisions.