MDI High School graduate Zoe Olson has been awarded the $1,000 Peter H. Dolliver Legacy Scholarship presented in partnership with the Bar Harbor Garden Club. Olson is a junior at the University of Maine in Orono where she is studying Earth and Climate Science with a minor in Horticulture.

(From left) Mr. Dolliver’s two daughters Wendy Dolliver and Amy Young, scholarship recipient Zoe Olson, Bar Harbor Garden Club President Jane Sanderson, and club scholarship chair Tom McIntyre. Photograph courtesy of the Bar Harbor Garden Club.
The scholarship honors Peter Dolliver whose lifelong interest in gardening began with a victory garden he tended with his father during World War II. After receiving a BA in Horticulture from Rutgers University, Mr. Dolliver pursued several different occupations before starting Deer Meadow Landscaping in Manset which flourished for decades. Throughout his life, he maintained an immaculately tended vegetable garden in his backyard, providing fresh vegetables to family and friends. When Mr. Dolliver died in 2015, daughters Amy and Wendy and son Kyffin created this scholarship in his memory.
For the past two summers, scholarship recipient Olson has worked as a landscaper on Mount Desert Island which has piqued her interest in plant life and how it relates to Maine’s changing climate.