Not long ago I gave a garden talk at the monthly meeting of a wonderful local garden club. They were, like so many passionate gardeners, warm and friendly and devoted to many aspects of horticulture—ecology, hands-on gardening and growing and showing flowers to perfection. It was heady company.
The members work as horticulture volunteers at the Edison Greenhouse in West Orange, New Jersey. This two-storey structure was built in 1909 on the grounds of Thomas Edison’s estate, Glenmont, now part of the Thomas Edison National Historical Park. The greenhouse was used in Edison’s time to supply the house with plants and flowers. It is still filled with plants, including roses that are grown year round under glass.
Sadly, the one rose that does not flourish in the greenhouse today is the great inventor’s namesake, which the volunteers referred to as ‘Thomas Edison.’ Apparently the last specimen died not long ago and the volunteers have been unable to locate a replacement, because the rose is no longer in commerce.
‘Thomas A. Edison’ is one in a long line of roses named for celebrities and distinguished people. But fame is a fleeting thing and roses named after celebrated people—even those as well-known as Thomas Edison—sometimes decline in popularity as their namesakes fade into the annals of history. Consider ’Douglas MacArthur’, a pink-blend hybrid tea rose named after the fabled mid-century American general. It has vanished from commerce. ‘President Herbert Hoover’, on the other hand, has done a little better, with a few nurseries still selling the coral-pink rose named for the thirty-first president.
Mysteries like the locations of any living ‘Thomas A. Edison’ roses are catnip to garden history buffs like me. Since I have never seen ‘Thomas Edison’, I started by visiting a reference website, http://helpmefind.com/roses. I entered the name ‘Thomas Edison’. Nothing came up. I entered the name ‘Edison’ and I got a hit—‘Thomas A. Edison’. I clicked on the link and there it was—a big pink hybrid tea rose, bred in France in 1931, the year of Edison’s death. Clearly, it was named to honor the life’s work or the memory of the great man.
The ‘Thomas A. Edison’ rose webpage also has links to rose vendors, but a click on the link came up empty, with no known suppliers. A result like this makes obtaining the rose more difficult, as the variety is so far from commerce that not even the specialty old rose growers produce it.
Fortunately, the site also lists gardens where the rose is grown. These may be private or public gardens in the United States or abroad. A number of gardens were listed, the most promising of which is The Friends of Vintage Roses Collection, a non-profit organization in Sebastopol, CA. The Help Me Find page devoted to the organization’s inventory does indeed list ‘Thomas A. Edison’ among the roses in its living collection. The next step for the Edison Greenhouse gardeners would be to contact the Friends of Vintage Roses to see if they would be willing to donate cuttings for propagation, either at the Edison Greenhouse or by a commercial rose propagator.
It is possible that the rose might also grow at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, Florida. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were great friends and spent winters on neighboring Florida estates. Both the Ford and Edison properties are home to formal rose gardens. The Edison rose garden was only installed in 2008, but features roses that were grown during Edison’s lifetime by his second wife, Mina. It seems unlikely, but the Edison rose garden just might have a ‘Thomas A. Edison’ rose and the curator or director might be willing to part with a cutting for the Edison Greenhouse.
So it is possible that ‘Thomas A. Edison’ will eventually come home to the West Orange facility. I hope so, as it seems the best place in the world for it to grow.
If you want to find a source for a historic plant variety, the Internet can be your best friend. Start with a simple search, combining the name with the type of flower, for instance “Lily Langtry” and “daffodil”. This should yield suppliers–if there are any–and possible references to the plant. Helpmefind features compendiums of clematis and peony cultivars as well as roses. For other genera, seek out the appropriate plant affinity group–for example the American Violet Society for viola information–which most likely hosts a website with contact information. You can also search out public botanical gardens or arboreta with significant collections of the plant genus that you are looking for. Reach out to the director of horticulture via e-mail and see if he/she knows the plant you seek.
Another way to locate “lost” plants is to do an Internet search for reference books devoted to the variety. Often they include helpful society, vendor and botanical institution references in appendices to the text. Use those references to help solve the mystery.
Every garden plant tells a story and most of those stories have roots in history. During the coming cold months, delve into the histories of your own plants or plants that you love. Nurturing the virtual garden in your mind is an excellent way to improve your actual garden.