Bet you’ve seen my old friend Peggy Martin around town. Seems like she is in every third garden these days. Not the actual Peggy, who is a well-known rose gardener from just southeast of New Orleans, but an unnamed antique rose she had collected as a cutting from an old Louisiana garden. Its glossy green disease-resistant leaves frame large tight bunches of smallish pink flowers, with just one cluster creating a near-perfect nosegay. And though it flowers heavily in mid spring, it spritzes more flowers through the summer with a nice flush in the fall.
It is a vigorous cascading climber, though not invasive like the earlier-blooming wild roadside ramblers, and is nearly thornless. Though it doesn’t get out of control through spreading roots, it can be a monster, fifteen feet tall and wide, so don’t be tempted to put it on a flimsy store-bought arbor - make a big one or train it over a porch. As if all this isn’t enough, it comes with an amazing story of resilience. Less than twenty years ago Peggy’s neighborhood was overwhelmed by floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina which destroyed her home and submerged her garden under twenty feet of murky salt water for two weeks. When Peggy finally made it back to survey the damage, only two plants appeared to have survived: an old heirloom bulb called “milk and wine” crinum, and a single sprout from this old climbing rose – a shining ray of green emerging from the smelly muck.
Texas horticulturist Bill Welch, a southern garden historian, seeing the vigorous vine as an amazing testament to a garden plant’s ability to overcome the worst circumstances, came up with the idea to get rose nurseries to propagate and sell what was by then being informally called The Katrina Rose. Soon an overwhelming push by rosarians and garden club members had this once-overlooked foundling renamed the Peggy Martin rose, in honor of its original owner.
As word got around of the rose’s exquisite beauty and durability, vines of it started showing up in gardens all over everywhere, where when it comes into bloom everyone who sees it wants one for their own garden. Problem is, as soon as word of its availability gets around, it quickly sells out. Luckily, it is not patented and one of the easiest roses to root – just cut a pencil-size section of this year’s growth, strip off all the leaves, and stick it into moist potting soil, in a bright spot without direct light. I cover mine with a plastic bottle with the bottom cut off and the cap thrown away, and it usually roots within weeks.
Tell you how fast it grows? Just two years ago after Peggy handed me a barely-rooted piece about a foot and a half long, I planted it at my son’s ten-foot arbor which is now completely covered, its long arching branches loaded down with flowers. With no sprays, just an occasional soaking and a little fertilizer.
There are other great roses, of course, including dozens that flower nearly constantly with little or no care. Many are planted in the historic Greenwood Cemetery just one block north of our state Capitol in Jackson, where gardeners are welcome to photograph and take cuttings from them. I have a list for anyone who emails me via felderrushing.blog.
But now, when Peggy Martin flowers, I am reminded that every single one I see came from the hands of other gardeners; in just 20 years it has become a visible testament to the connecting web between gardeners who share. It’s a beautiful symbol of survival and community.
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the Gestalt Gardener on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.
