The McLaughlin Foundation marked a true milestone Saturday: it’s 10-year anniversary, or what it calls “Ten Years of Preservation and Education” at the stunning McLaughlin Garden.

Sadly, the anniversary celebration was marred by a striking oversight: the absence of any acknowledgment of Bernard McLauglin’s cantankerous adopted son, Richard Tribou McLaughlin.

The McLaughlin Garden, as it is called, is a treasure in the town of Paris. The 3.5-acre property sits on the traffic-ridden main street, but beyond the garden gate is an absolute oasis of fragrance, beauty and style. It is a place of wonder, where artists gather to sketch and musicians gather to harmonize, considered by horticulturists to be a living museum of hardy Zone 4 plants.

This public garden, now run by the nonprofit McLaughlin Foundation, was once a private garden created by Bernard McLaughlin. Although private, McLaughlin invited the public to freely enjoy the space, so long as visitors maintained the property’s serenity. He simply wanted to share the garden he loved.

As Bernard McLaughlin aged, his friends and family pitched in to help maintain the carefully tended beds. In his final years, McLaughlin was unable to keep up with the chores and relied most heavily on his son, Richard, to prune the lilacs, trim the hedges, thin the perennials, mow the grass and mulch the soil. The younger man maintained his father’s seed catalogs, garden maps and precise instructions on soil preparation. For him, the work became a labor of love for his father, mending years of shared estrangement.

So, while the McLaughlin Foundation might be celebrating the past decade of preservation, Richard was responsible for its preservation long before that.

When Bernard McLaughlin died in 1996, after 60 years of cultivating what has been called the largest perennial arboretum on the East Coast, he verbally agreed to give his flowers to his son. It was a clear gesture the master gardener trusted his son to preserve his legacy.

The property was to be sold and the proceeds used to house and educate Maine orphans, so Richard planned to move the garden to his own land in Greenwood to establish a floral preserve.

The plan to move the garden didn’t sit well with some in the community and dozens of donors mounted an attempt to raise money to buy and preserve the garden and home intact, believing the property’s essence was in its location.

What followed was a bitter custody dispute over the property and the plants, a dispute that involved a legal battle over the future of the garden. In the end (and without the lawyers), Lee Dassler, founder of the McLaughlin Foundation, extended an olive branch to Richard in the form of a note, inviting him to work out their differences for the sake of the garden they both wanted so much to preserve. Richard, who had already moved dozens of varieties from Paris to Greenwood, agreed.

That agreement was the start of the McLaughlin Foundation, a foundation that has become a real fixture in Paris, an inviting sanctuary and thriving outdoor classroom. Details of the clash that spurred the creation of the foundation are ugly, but the result is beauty defined. Failure to include Richard Tribou McLaughlin in the history of this garden is just plain wrong.