Hilltop director dies Thursday in Philadelphia

Greg Speichert, director of the Hilltop Garden and Nature Center, died Thursday night in Philadelphia. He devoted his life to plants and introduced more than 400 of them to the gardening community.

Speichert, 48, was attending the Independent Plant Breeders Conference at Longwood Gardens when he died. His cause of death is unknown.

Speichert was the director at Hilltop for three years and was “an internationally known plant expert and had many friends around the world,” according to a blog post from friend Tim Wood of Spring Meadow Nursery in Michigan.

Wood was at the conference with Speichert and last spoke with him Wednesday.

“While I am very sad, I also feel so blessed to have seen him one last time. To have seen his smile. He was among friends. He was learning about plants, and he was happy,” Wood wrote on his blog.

Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, a water garden writer for Hoosier Gardener, knew Speichert since the 1990s and heard about his death in an e-mail from Wood.

She said she heard Speichert wasn’t feeling well at the conference and excused himself back to his hotel.

“I think it was a real stunner for all the people at that conference,” Meyers Sharp said, “because they just saw him.”

IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre said Monday that no one in the administration building had been contacted yet about the death.

“Unfortunately things don’t move that quickly,” he said.

MacIntyre said he learned about Speichert’s death by reading the newspaper.

“A lot of us were surprised and saddened to read that,”
he said.

With his wife, Speichert owned a nursery that specialized in water garden plants, and they wrote the “Encyclopedia of Water Garden Plants” and published a water gardening magazine.
 
“It’s just a terrible loss for the gardening community,” Meyers Sharp said.

She also gave her condolences to the IU community, knowing Speichert enjoyed his time at Hilltop.

“He was so happy there,” she said. “And so excited about the opportunities that Hilltop presented to him.”