PEACE
The other day I was getting ready to give a garden talk and thought about my father’s rose garden. The garden is long gone, but I carry it with me whenever I pick up a trowel and go out into mine.
My father, an obstetrician, thought of himself as a student of medicine and a man of science. He also had a romantic streak a mile wide and his garden reflected it. He loved big blowsy peonies, fragrant lilacs, iris, magnolias and–most of all–roses. Being a man of his generation, his favorites were the hybrid teas, which took pride of place in the garden. My father’s hybrid teas lived like royalty; lodged in the sunniest space, covered with the thickest blanket of cocoa bean mulch, irrigated when necessary and treated to a program of regular spraying to keep off the bugs. By contrast, organically grown roses often have to shift for themselves. They get lots of mulch and lots of admiration, but not much else.
My father’s favorites were big, bright roses introduced in the optimistic years after World War II, and all of them have become American classics. He loved ‘Mr. Lincoln’, a fragrant rose with velvety red petals, introduced in 1965; ‘Tropicana’, an orange-flowered show-off, introduced in 1962; and ‘Pascali,’ a white rose introduced at around the same time. But the rose that really captivated him was the best selling rose of all time, ‘Peace’. He had several in the rose bed and a climbing Peace that scaled the old bricks on the side of our garage.
Even if it had no story, ‘Peace’ would be a great plant. The shrubs are extremely vigorous, with plenty of glossy green leaves and flowers that can be as big as butter plates, sometimes six to eight inches across in ideal circumstances. The flower color changes according to season and soil conditions, but the petals are a combination of yellow and cream, with pink edges. While not as fragrant as some other hybrid teas, ‘Peace’ has a light, sweet scent. The long stems make the flowers lovely in bouquets and I think they are as beautiful fully opened as they are in bud–a trait that doesn’t always distinguish hybrid teas.
‘Peace’ is a French rose with a history so striking that I have always wondered why nobody ever made it into a movie. I am sure that someone could do it now. World War II would provide a dramatic backdrop as Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and George Clooney acted the principal roles supported by a cast of ten thousand roses.
The Peace story began in 1935, when French nurseryman Francis Meilland pollinated a number of roses in the hopes of finding a few offspring worthy of eventual introduction. One of the most promising seedlings was slated for commercial launch in 1939. Meilland, worried about the imminent German invasion of France, decided to send cuttings of the new rose to selected rose growers in the United States, Italy, Germany and Turkey. The Turkish shipment got lost, but the cuttings made it to the other three countries. The well known story goes that Meilland made arrangements to ship the America-bound cuttings to Robert Pyle of the Conard-Pyle Nursery in West Grove, Pennsylvania. The grower entrusted the rose parcel to the American consul in Lyon, who put it in a diplomatic pouch that was loaded onto one of the last planes to leave France for America before the Nazi invasion.
The cuttings made it safely to Pennsylvania, where they were grown on at the Conard-Pyle facility. The plants’ vigor and beautiful flowers impressed the nursery’s owner, Robert Pyle. When he was finally able to contact Francis Meilland at the end of the war, Pyle predicted great things for the new rose and asked that it be named ‘Peace’. In Italy, the plant had already been named ‘Gioia’ (Joy) and in Germany, it had been christened ‘Gloria Dei’ (Glory of God). Back in France, Meilland had named the rose ‘Mme A. Meilland’, after his mother, but Meilland acceded to the new American name. ‘Peace’ was officially introduced in America on May 8, 1945, also known as V-E Day, when the Armistice that marked the end of World War II in Europe, was signed. Over the next ten years, as returning troops rejoined their families and launched the Baby Boom, ‘Peace’ enjoyed a boom of its own, with more than thirty million bushes sold. My father’s ‘Peace’ roses were among them. I suspect that every rose lover in my home town had his or her own Peace as well, but my father was particularly devoted to ours. I remember seeing the cut flowers in a big glass pitcher on our dining room chest and wishing that I could touch them. My mother warned me about the kind of hideous punishment that would follow such an act, but I managed to get close to them anyhow, by sneaking out into the garden while my father was off delivering babies and holding one of the big flowerheads in my hands. I didn’t pick the flower, but I sniffed it, felt the warm petals and was amazed by the many colors contained in a single blossom. I understood why it was my father’s favorite.
I have forty rosebushes in my garden now, but not a single ‘Peace’. There are lovely specimens in the local public garden, but lately I have thought that it is time to buy one of my own. My father, gone now for twelve years, would undoubtedly approve.