Jo Bömer (1943 - 2015)

Jo Bömer at the August 2014 Oak Open Days at Trompenburg

Very unexpectedly, in her home in Klein Zundert, The Netherlands, Jo Bömer passed away on March 4^th 2015.

Jo was a long term member of the International Oak Society and attended many of the triennial meetings as well as Oak Open Days. At the last OOD held in Trompenburg Gardens, August 2014, Jo shared her experiences and pictures with the group on fastigiate oaks in Hungary. In her professional career Jo started as a landscape architect and teacher. Later, together with her husband Maarten, Jo started the Bömer Nursery in 1967. It became renowned for their collection of rare cultivars of oaks, beeches, and many rare broadleaved trees, conifers, and shrubs. Quite a few of these were cultivars that they collected on trips in Eastern Europe in a time when not many Western European people travelled there. Famous in the trade is one of their introductions Quercus rysophylla ‘Maya’. In 1997 the IOS visited the Bömer Nursery on which occasion many of us were amazed by the rich assortment that they were able to produce. We shall miss her, a most pleasant travel companion and a very knowledgeable trees person. 

Quercus rysophylla ‘Maya’ and other Bömer Nursery introductions (Source: Bömer stocklist 2006-2007)