Dedication of the Léonie Bell Noisette Rose Garden Collection at Tufton Farm

--Monticello, 23 May 1998. Rev. Douglas T. Seidel

We are here this afternoon to dedicate a garden of very special plants. One-hundred ninety-six years ago this very spring, as Thomas Jefferson was completing his first full year as President, a gentleman rice farmer in Charleston, South Carolina named John Champneys had an idea. Following the newly-discovered principles of hand-pollination, he brought together two very different roses. The first was the Double White Musk Rose (Rosa moschata plena), which had come into European gardens from the Islamic World in the early Middle Ages. The other parent was the 'Old Blush' China Rose, the Pink Daily Rose recently arrived in the West after a career of a thousand years in the Orient. Champneys' resulting seedling was the first hybrid rose created in North America. 'Champneys' Pink Cluster', as he dubbed it, was possibly one of the most influential and important hybrids ever to dawn on the horticultural scene. Moderately hardy and generously everblooming, Champneys' hybrid and its immediate descendants were cherished by nineteenth-century gardens above and below the Mason-Dixon Line. This garden is dedicated to keeping this piece of American history and horticulture alive and safe for another generation.

This garden is established also as a memorial to a lady, Léonie Bell. Until her illness in 1992 Mrs. Bell was an author, botanical artist extraordinaire, co-founder of the Heritage Rose Group, wife, and mother of seven. She was my mentor and my friend until her death in 1996. Thirty years ago I sent Mrs. Bell a fan letter at the publication of her book, The Fragrant Year, and I asked her lots of questions about old roses. To my amazement she wrote me back with answers! We became correspondents and then friends. We shared a common desire to continue the work of Mrs. Frederick Love Keays who pioneered old rose collecting and identification in the United States in the 1930s and 40s. We began our mutual project in June of 1968, canvassing the neighborhoods, the cemeteries, and the old gardens of our area in eastern Pennsylvania and down into southern New Jersey. Those were some of the happiest and most interesting hours of our lives. We learned how to propagate by trial and error. We scanned old books and catalogues for clues to identifications. Then, of course, we had to enlarge our gardens to accommodate the finds. The class of roses that always generated the most discussion was the set of plants you see here: the Noisettes, the early ones that preserved the character of Champneys' original, the ones that were hardy for us. If there was one old rose group Mrs. Bell loved more than others, it was the Noisettes. At her funeral Dr. Art Tucker, Rose Society friends like Pat Pitkins (here with us today), the Bell family, and myself came to a consensus that the best way to remember this special lady was with the kind of garden you see here, a permanent collection of early Noisettes for preservation and further study at Monticello's Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, where the past is cherished.

Finally, it must be said today that the history of plants is also a history of the people who grow them. Many memories of many lives now grow here with these roses:

• The memory of Philippe Stanislaus Noisette lives here. He was the son of a Parisian family of florists who twice in his life became a refugee. The first time was when he fled to the island of Haiti to escape the mayhem of the French Revolution. The second time was in 1794 when he barely escaped Toussaint's slave uprising against the French colonials and came with his family to Charleston. Philippe's memory lives here in the class of roses that bears his name, and the seedlings he raised from 'Champneys' Pink Cluster'.

• The memory of Philippe's wife, Celestine, a free Haitian mulatto lives here. She came with her husband and seven children to South Carolina in an age when marriage across the color lines was forbidden. She had to be declared her husband's slave to remain with him. The year before his death Philippe Noisette would petition the legislature to have his wife and family declared free. This love is remembered here today.

• We also remember Jean-Pierre Vibert, who was on the other side of the political fence from Noisette. He was a soldier of the Revolution and an officer in Napoleon's army. Forced to retire from the military because of injuries, this disabled veteran became a gardener, then nurseryman, then ground-breaking breeder of new roses. Philadelphia horticulturist Robert Buist says of a visit to Vibert in the 1830s: "He directed my attention with great enthusiasm to this plant and said, 'Celleci est si belle que Je lui ai donné le nom de ma fille cherie--Aimée Vibert'" ("This particular rose is so beautiful that I gave it the name of my dear daughter, Aimée Vibert.") Buist continues, "This enthusiasm can be easily understood by those who like myself have been so fortunate as to see the two Aimée Viberts--the rose and the young girl--both in full bloom and both as lovely as their sweet name." The beauty of the first Aimée is long gone, but her rose and her memory live here today!

• Mrs. Keays, who got the whole ball rolling, found this old white Noisette growing by the post office in her rural Maryland town and named it for the locale, "Saint Leonard's." Her memory and the rose are here.

• Mrs. Keays recounts in the 1932 American Rose Annual how her black cook, Lily, came up the garden path with this particular rose in her knapsack. Lily's rose, called locally "Faded Pink Monthly," was a plant that had been rooted by her mother before the Civil War. The plant that grows at Tufton now is the slip of a slip of a plant rooted before 1860. When I discovered it at the site of Mrs. Keays home in 1973 six plants were still guarding her front walk thirty years after any gardener had touched them! The rose and the memory live on.

• The memory of Carl Cato and the folks of the Bermuda Rose Society, the Texas Rose Rustlers, and those who protected the old roses of the Miami area and shared them with me still lives on. Through the generosity of the Bell family and through the foresight of the leaders of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, the garden before us has become a reality. We dedicate this garden with the hope: "May the memories and the roses live and grow here 'til time is no more!"