It is amazing how far afield you can go on a rainy day when you are trying to order garden phlox. In my case I went all the way to Long Island in the 1920’s, with detours that went even further back. All of this started as a quest for information about a particular tall lavender-blue phlox, Phlox paniculata ‘Katherine’.
The phlox was named after Katherine Aymar Sands Havemeyer (1871-1951), the wife of Theodore A. Havemeyer, Jr., sportsman, public servant and heir to a sugar processing fortune. The Havemeyer’s, whose 1893 wedding was an opulent society affair, had an estate, “Cedar Hill” in Brookville, Long Island. In the 1920’s, a young gardener, working at “Cedar Hill,” bred a new pink phlox and, with an eye on professional advancement, named it after the wife of his employer. The gardener was Martin Viette, who went on to found an eponymous nursery on Long Island in 1929. The business continued to be run by Martin and later, his son, Andre, until it was sold in 1976. After selling the Long Island nursery, Andre and his family moved to Fishersville, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and established the Viette Nursery, which is still going strong. According to the company history on the Viette website, ‘Katherine’ was lost to commerce for some time between the mid 1960’s and 1976, when author and nurseryman Fred McGourty discovered it growing in an old Connecticut garden.
Now thankfully restored to the retail marketplace, ‘Katherine’ will soon be installed in my home garden.
Mrs. Havemeyer was honored with at least two other namesake plants—a rose-pink peony, introduced in 1921 and a double-flowered lilac, Syringa vulgaris ‘Katherine’. The latter, with lavender blooms, was a sufficiently “good grower” to receive the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit.
Katherine Havemeyer rests peacefully in the Brookville Cemetery in Upper Brookville, Long Island. Her namesakes live on all over the world.