Envision a fragrant and expansive rose garden. It’s a quiet, sunny day, the sky is blue, and you are waiting for friends and colleagues to join you in a celebration of peace. It could be in Pacific Palisades or Sacramento, California, Atlanta, Georgia, Mexico City, or Assisi, Italy. What you share together here will keep alive the dream of peace on earth, goodwill toward men, the inspiration behind the creation of the International World Peace Rose Gardens.
Among the thousands of roses in these gardens, you will find the Peace rose, a blossom with a deeply moving history.
‘Peace,’ without doubt, is the finest Hybrid Tea ever raised and it will remain a standard variety forever. ~ Peter Beales, English rose grower and expert, Classic Roses.
In 1936 French horticulturalist Francis Meilland developed this hybrid. Three years later, foreseeing the German invasion of France and wishing to preserve the rose, he sent cuttings to friends in Italy, Turkey, Germany, and the United States. In 1945, Meilland wrote to Field Marshal Alan Brooke, author of the master strategy that won WWII, to thank him for liberating France and to ask him if he would consent to giving his name to this rose. The Field Marshal graciously declined and suggested alternatively the name “Peace.” On April 29, 1945 – on the very day Berlin fell and the war was pronounced over – the Conard-Pyle Company introduced “Peace” in America.
That same year, Dr. Ray Allen, secretary of the American Rose Society, sent each of the 49 delegations at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco a single, long-stemmed Peace rose with the following note:
We hope the Peace rose will influence men’s thoughts for everlasting world peace.
The Peace rose is alive and well in our national and poetic memory. Read this recent post from a popular gardening site:
My parents grew a beautiful specimen of the Peace rose at their suburban home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the late 1950′s. It flourished in the middle of the back yard in full sun for many years, sprawling over the woodpile every summer. It was the only rose on the property, as my father didn’t like plants with thorns, but my Mother insisted on having it, as two of her brothers had served in the military in World War II–one in Europe and one in the Pacific, and she grew it with hope that no one would have to endure that kind of worry again.
Our experience tells us that peace, like a rose, must be tended with constant care ~ generation after generation ~ in a climate of love.
Summer 2010 Update. International World Peace Rose Gardens celebrated the 18th Anniversary of its Martin Luther King, Jr. I Have a Dream World Peace Rose Garden in Atlanta, Georgia. Students from the Gaza Strip, Peace Ambassadors-Pakistan, and Valentine Peace Project (VPP) were winners in this year’s Inspirational Messages of Peace Contest. Congratulations to Ammar Banni and VPP Founder Federico Hewson.
Weekly Image ~ above rt ~ Peace Rose.
If you liked this post, you might also enjoy reading: Poetic Memory.
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We too have a peace rose in our rose garden. Here in Southern California it still shows its white petals with soft pink edges like a candle that glows. Thank you Viktoria for introducing us to the history of “Peace Rose.”
Freud advised that we all need work, beauty and love. Gardening, particularly the attentive tending of roses, integrates each of these necessary elements nicely. To peace…