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(Photo courtesy of Old House Gardens)<\/p>\n
When I walk around my garden I hear voices.\u00a0 Sometimes those voices come from across the street, where my neighbor is pulling weeds to the accompaniment of talk radio.\u00a0 More often though, the voices are inside my head, retelling the stories of each plant that I pass.\u00a0 Those stories weave themselves together like the fragrance notes in a complex perfume.<\/p>\n
Soon there will be another story in the mix.\u00a0 \u2018Frances Willard\u2019, a tall, herbaceous peony, will arrive this fall and bloom next spring.\u00a0 I bought \u2018Frances\u2019 because the flowers are beautiful, with pink buds that open and age to cream petals with touches of peach blush.\u00a0 It is a vigorous mid-season bloomer, with strong stems and dark green leaves.\u00a0 The variety has been going strong for over a century and I can already picture it holding forth in a sunny section of m y garden.<\/p>\n
The story of this heirloom peony is really several stories.\u00a0 \u2018Frances Willard\u2019 was bred by a well known breeder, named after a redoubtable woman, kept in commerce for years by a small specialist nursery and rescued by yet another specialist plant seller.\u00a0 The fluffy pink and white blooms carry a lot of history.<\/p>\n
\u2018Frances Willard\u2019, introduced in 1907, was one of many bred by the Brand Nursery, the first such commercial institution in Minnesota.\u00a0 The firm\u2019s founder, Oliver Brand, established the company in the town of Faribault, but it was most likely his son and successor, Archie, who introduced \u2018Frances Willard\u2019.\u00a0 Archie specialized in varieties of Paeonia lactiflora and, according to several sources, the plants were known for their vigor.\u00a0 The company thrived, reaching a commercial high point in the 1920\u2019s.\u00a0 It 1929 the Brands took the unusual step of making Myrtle Gentry, originally hired to run the company\u2019s office, a full partner in the enterprise.\u00a0 Taking a woman into an established partnership was certainly unusual for the time and says a lot for the abilities of Ms. Gentry and the sensibilities of the Brands.\u00a0 It is not surprising that one of the company\u2019s best peony cultivars was named \u2018Myrtle Gentry\u2019.<\/p>\n
Another strong, competent woman, Frances Willard (1839-1898), was celebrated in her time as a feminist, educator and founder of the temperance movement.\u00a0 She was born near Rochester, New York, and attended college in Illinois.\u00a0 Her career led her through various teaching and administrative positions, culminating in 1871, when she became the first Dean of Women at Northwestern University.\u00a0 During the second half of her career, Willard turned her attention women\u2019s suffrage and the temperance movement. Her activism helped lead to the founding of the Women\u2019s Christian Temperance Union in 1874.\u00a0 She was known for exhorting women to \u201cdo everything\u201d\u2014engaging in all forms of public and private activism for the causes she espoused.<\/p>\n
Admirable though she was in many ways, Frances Willard was not immune to prejudices that were widespread in her day.\u00a0 While campaigning for the temperance movement she made derogatory statements about members of minority ethnic groups that troubled some of her contemporaries and still concern her modern admirers.\u00a0 Still, her accomplishments were an inspiration to many people and her fame was widespread.\u00a0 Nine years after her death, the Brands named a strong young peony seedling \u2018Frances Willard\u2019 in her honor.\u00a0 Willard\u2019s name is not as widely known today, but her namesake plants lives on thanks to a couple of nursery owners devoted to keeping the best of the past.<\/p>\n
The first of those was Sherman Nursery, an Iowa concern founded in 1897.\u00a0 Family owned until 2009, the nursery specialized in peonies and maintained a large collection of specimens introduced in the nineteenth century.\u00a0 \u2018Frances Willard\u2019 was among them.\u00a0 Hard hit by the 2008 recession, the family finally sold the business to another, larger nursery in 2009.\u00a0 This resulted in many of the older peonies being removed from commerce.\u00a0 Nursery owner Scott Kunst of Old House Gardens has reintroduced some of the Sherman Nursery\u2019s peonies, including \u2018Frances Willard\u2019 and \u2018Chestine Gowdy\u2019, another Brand peony with pink, cream and crimson petals.\u00a0 Kunst also contacted the University of Michigan, which maintains a collection of heirloom varieties in the Peony Garden at the Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor.\u00a0 Arboretum officials, who have a wide circle of contacts in the peony world, also agreed to help with the Sherman peony preservation effort.<\/p>\n
\u2018France Willard\u2019 the peony has all of the strength and vitality of the original Frances Willard without the personal baggage.\u00a0 The plant is an artifact of an earlier time and a tribute not only to its namesake, but to those who have worked to ensure the survival of heirloom varieties.\u00a0 To order, contact Old House Gardens, 536 Third St., Ann Arbor, MI 48103, (734)995-1486; www.oldhousegardens.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Catalog $2.00.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Photo courtesy of Old House Gardens) When I walk around my garden I hear voices.\u00a0 Sometimes those voices come from across the street, where my neighbor is pulling weeds to the accompaniment of talk radio.\u00a0 More often though, the voices are inside my head, retelling the stories of each plant that I pass.\u00a0 Those … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[313,307,303,306,186,304,305,311,291,302,292,312,308,310,309],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-summer","tag-brand-nursery","tag-frances-willard","tag-heirloom-peonies","tag-heirloom-plant-nurseries","tag-heirloom-plants","tag-heritage-plants","tag-how-to-find-heirloom-plants","tag-nichols-arboretum","tag-old-house-gardens","tag-peonies","tag-scott-kunst","tag-sherman-nursery","tag-temperence","tag-university-of-michegan","tag-womens-sufferage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1480,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions\/1480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}