A rambling rose lost to time is being revived through efforts in Shreveport, LA (2024)

A 118-acre tract deep in the woods of west Shreveport is giving refuge to 300 varieties of a historic rose almost lost to time. The ramblers are being saved, cutting by cutting, by the American Rose Societyand American Rose Centerboth located at 8877 Jefferson Paige Road between Shreveport and the tiny hamlet of Greenwood, La.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a group of heritage roses known as "ramblers" for their desire to climb and roam could be found in every Victorian botanical garden and arboretum. The thorn-covered vines that can reach high into the sky if given something to climb produce bright red, pink, and yellow, pale yellow, white or purple flowers depending on the variety.

"They will grow into the trees if you let them," said Don Morgan, the garden manager at the American Rose Center, while looking over some of the 300 different varieties of ramblers at the center.

The rambler roses, according to Morgan, face the same care issues as other roses- wet weather can cause downy mildew and hot, dry weather can bring on spider mites, but otherwise they are susceptible to no particular pest or fungus related challenges.

Why then, have these beautiful plants disappeared from public view in the U.S. and become almost impossible to purchase? It's all because of the bloom. In the 1930s reblooming climbing roses burst onto the scene. The heritage ramblers bloom once- generally in May. For a week — or two — if you are lucky, the vines drip with heavily scented blooms. Then, they are gone until the next year. By the 1930s, public opinion had sided with the multi bloomers.

That's a shame, Claire Bissell, executive director of the rose center, said. The historic ramblers, Bissell said, are spectacular displays. By 2025, private gardeners will be able to have a bit of this spectacle in their yards when Heirloom Roses of St. Paul, Oregonoffers the first three varieties for purchase. In the meantime, the ARS will reach out to botanical gardens, arboretums and significant private gardens around the U.S., asking them to plant some of the ramblers, too.

Bissell said rose society board members came to the realization they needed to split up the ramblers to prevent their total loss. "After that bad storm in Shreveport last June people started to realize, well what if something happened to the collection here at the American Rose Center and we lost them to disease or storm?

"The rule of thumb for roses is that you want to have them in three nurseries, three botanical gardens and 30 home gardens, so the rose society has begun the process of trying to get these different roses into other areas and out to other people so that if something were to happen to our collection, we wouldn't lose the only one."

It was because a collection of some of the last ramblers was threatened that the ARS got involved in the first place. "This was the brainchild of Claude Graves, the rose curator at the Dallas Arboretum," Bissell said, and came about through a timely convergence. A private gardener in the Pacific Northwest name Anne Belovich, an avid grower and collector of the historic flowers, and her daughter Teddie Mower, made sure the rose center had cuttings of rare originals.

Then Graves, a long time member of the American Rose Society, discovered that the Chambersville Tree Farms nursery in McKinney, Texas was planning to close and had about 40 varieties of the ramblers. Graves got the donation of those 40, still more were located at a rosarium in Germany, and along the way, other varieties believed lost were rediscovered in Belovich's private garden.

Bissell says the look back at these heritage climbers is as important a part of the rose center and society's mission as looking ahead. "That's a part of our mission— education and research. We support those hybridizers who are always doing research in preventing rose diseases and coming up with new and more disease resistant roses, but the other part is preservation of old species of roses. We don't want to lose the roses that people grew up with in their grandparents' garden."

Bissell said it is also thrilling to know that the center is the only location where some of these varieties may exist. "We're working on partnerships with nurseries to get them back into commerce, we're working on partnerships with botanical gardens — some of the ramblers will be donated — and we're working with private collectors to get some into their gardens. Really good records will be kept, we will keep up with where all of them are."

"We've been here in Shreveport for 50 years, the organization has been around for 150 years, but we're still very relevant. Maybe we were your grandparent's rose society, but we still have a lot to offer."