🌹 This Rose is us right now 🌹

Dear friends, if you are not familiar with the story of the Peace Rose, please allow us to warm your heart for the next several minutes with a quick history.

CC image courtesy of Ron Frazier on Flickr

Shortly after the German military invaded France in 1940, Francis Meilland received notice that his rose farm would be appropriated to feed the occupying troops. The bushes that had been grown by his family for generations were to be plowed under to make room for food crops.

Desperate to preserve a new rose he’d been breeding for the past 3 years, Francis shipped crates of budwood to friends in Turkey, Germany, and Italy. One plant was smuggled in a diplomat’s bag aboard (what some stories say was) the last flight to the US from France, before the occupation took hold. That single plant found its way to a rose grower in the US, where it was cultivated during WW2. The other shipments were not so lucky.

After the war ended, Francis discovered his rose was thriving but had not been officially named. He wrote to Alan Brooke, a war hero, asking if he would consider allowing the rose to bear Brooke’s name. Brooke replied, saying he would be forgotten quickly by history and suggested that ‘Peace’ would be a more appropriate title.

CC image courtesy of Malcolm Manners on Flickr

By 1992 over 100 million of the ‘Peace Rose’ had been sold and planted throughout the world. Its commercial success allowed the Meilland family to recover, restore their farm and continue their work. Of its remarkable history, Francis wrote:

“How strange to think that all these millions of rose buses [sic] sprang from one tiny seed no bigger than the head of a pin, a seed which we might so easily have overlooked, or neglected in a moment of inattention.”

I learned about the Peace Rose during my first job tending hundreds of roses at a plant nursery. I admired it’s history and its fabulous honey-pink flowers, but noticed that it was less vigorous than modern roses and slightly more prone to mildew. This week I reached out to rose expert Sarah Owens, who confirmed that — while completely charming — it is a difficult rose to grow and maintain without significant chemical assistance, and that she has given it “the shovel prune” to make way for other roses that can thrive in organic gardens.

With gardening, as with most other things, there is no stasis. Vigor, the ability to overcome disease and thrive in a garden, is the ongoing work of every engaged plantsman. And perhaps, an apt metaphor for our current civic state.

How about a spoon full of plant-sugar to make this week go down?

Speaking of Sarah Owens, she’s currently in Istanbul building a community bakery and teaching local bakers how to work with heritage grains. Learn more or support her work. We’ve mentioned this but it bears repeating: she’s the toast AND jam. The whole shebang.

Treat your ears to Greg Peterson’s terrific mixtape. If you’re renewing yourself politically or just prepping for a fresh season of gardening, these are the tunes you’ll want to plant seeds to.

Greg also wrote a lovely meditation on recycling christmas trees and if you missed that, I’d suggest you pour yourself a cuppa and catch up. Also, treat your eyes to Robynne Heymans’s ode to dormant trees if you are an admirer of winter landscapes.

photo: lenna pettersson

Finally, if your energy is more “up in arms” than “winter hibernation” consider growing a small plant army. Let lenna pettersson lead the way with her post on easy peasy plant propagation. What do we want? More plants! When do we want them? All the time.

Viva la revolution,
— your fellow biophiliac, Michelle.