The American Noisettes

It is well known that the original noisette rose was an American production. The story is often told of John Champney of Charleston, SC crossing a musk and a china rose, creating Champney's Pink Cluster. A seedling of this his friend and neighbour Philippe Noisette sent to France in 1814, where it became known as the "Noisette" rose. The Noisette was taken up by the French hybridisers who crossed them with tea roses to create some of the iconic roses of the 19th century.

What is sometimes overlooked is how much further development of the noisettes went on in America. This was mainly due to the fact that in the warm summers of the American south-east the early noisettes frequently set seed and these seedlings increased the diversity of the group. In this story some notable American rosarians stand out:

James Pentland

From 1843 Pentland was gardener at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. Later he purchased land near the cemetery to set up his own nursery. Pentland prospered and in 1868 he was elected Representative for Baltimore City to the Maryland House of Delegates. His best known noisette roses were:

• Beauty of Green Mount (1854) "rich, brilliant carmine color, very large and double";
• Dr. Kane (1856) "with large yellow flowers";
• Woodland Marguerite (1859) "large, pure white, and double, free blooming, with a lilac fragrance".

Charles Grafton Page

Page (1812-1868) was an inventor and professor of chemistry in Washington DC, as well as a notable amateur rosarian. His roses included:

• America (distributed by Thomas G. Ward, 1859) "flowers large, creamy yellow, with a salmon tinge; a cross from Solfaterre and Safrano"
• Cinderella (1859) "rosy crimson".

Andrew Gray

Gray was foreman of the Buist nursery firm in Philadelphia before setting up on his own in Charleston SC around 1849. He raised at least two noisettes:

• Isabella Gray, named after his eldest daughter, a seedling from Cloth of Gold
• Jane Hardy (named after his wife) also a seedling from Cloth of Gold. According to Rivers this is: "like the old double yellow rose, its buds burst without opening".

Anthony Cook

Of Cook little appears to be know except he came from Baltimore. He raised two noisettes:

• Nasaliana (1872) "flowers pink, of flat form, very fragrant; a seedling from Desprez".
• Tuseneltea (1860) "Pale yellow; a seedling from Solfaterre".

Of these American seedlings few, if any, survive. This is in contrast to the French noisettes, such as Cloth of Gold (1841), Desprez and Lamarque which are still available today.

A great rosarian - Bertram Park

Photograph: Bertram Park, self-portrait with roses, c. 1950.

It sometimes comes as a surprise that great rosarians have a life behind the roses. Bertram Park, OBE, VMH (1883-1972) was one such man. In his 60s and 70s Park was a famous rosarian of stupendous authority, but as a young man in his 30s and 40s he was fêted as a photographer. He was considered avant garde and associated with the modern movement. Some of his numerous studies of the female nude rise to great art - although many are coyly romantic and trivial.

He turned to photography having studied art and music and in 1916 married Yvonne Gregory, a fellow photographer and miniature painter. In 1919 they opened a studio with Marcus Adams at 43 Dover Street, London (with the financial backing of the noted egyptologist Lord Carnarvon).

During the 1920s and 30s he was a sought-after society photographer. In 1926 he photographed the future King George VI when Duke of York, and in 1936 was commissioned to take the royal portraits for all the Royal Mail stamps.

However it is his photographs of the female nude for which he is best known. It may have come as a surprise to his royal sitters and nude models that while he was photographing them he was probably thinking of roses, which were the overweening passion of his life.

Between 1926 and 1936 he published several volumes of nude studies which seem to have been successful, as after the second world war he was able to devote himself increasingly to roses and rose growing.

He became a long-time council member (from 1931), and eventually president, of the Royal National Rose Society. He not only edited the Rose Society's "Rose Annual" for some time, but he also published prolifically on the cultivation of the rose between 1949 and 1962.

The following notes on his personal rose growing are from the jacket of the Collins Guide to Roses:

"His first rose garden was made at Hendon in 1917, but finding it was too small to accommodate all the roses he wished to grow, he moved to Wisborough Green in Sussex, where he grew about 5,000 and collected about 150 different rose species. Wartime difficulties caused him to leave his country home, and for over two years he lived in a London flat. His interest in roses, however, proved more than he could bear, and he moved to Pinner, where in 1942, he made his third garden, in which he grows about 3,000 roses. This time the soil is light sandy loam, which he finds much easier to work than the Sussex clay."

Any true gardener who has been forced by circumstance to spend time without a garden will sympathise with his wartime move to the London suburb of Pinner, borne out of desperation to surround himself with roses.

Books on Roses by Bertram Park

• Roses (1949)
• Roses: a select list and guide to pruning (1952)
• Roses: hints on planting and general cultivation (1954)
• Collins guide to roses (1956)
• Roses: a selected list of varieties [ed. B. Park] (1958)
• Roses: the cultivation of the rose (1958)
• The world of roses (1962)

Photographic Books

• Living sculpture: A record of expression in the human figure (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, 1926)
• Eve in the sunlight (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, n.d. [c. 1930])
• Sun bathers (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, 1935)
• The beauty of the female form (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, 1935)
• Curves and contrasts of the human figure (Gregory, Yvonne and Bertram Park, 1936)
• A Study of Sunlight and Shadow on the Female Form: For Artists and Art Students (Park, Bertram and Yvonne Gregory, 1939)

Who was Antonia Ridge?

Antonia Ridge wrote two well-loved popular rose books. They are the biography of Pierre-Joseph Redouté (The Man Who Painted Roses, 1974, Faber and Faber) and the story of the Peace rose - a biography of the Meilland family (For Love of a Rose, 1965, Faber and Faber).

These books seem dated now, written in a breathless style that once characterised popular biography, intent on placing the reader as a confidant of the subject. The struggles and triumphs of the Meilland family are imbued with immense nobility. The pettiness of everyday life is not allowed to obtrude, and the modern reader - used to a bit of modern muckraking in biographies - perhaps feels short-changed.

The style may be out of fashion but it does make for a riveting read. I read "The Man Who Painted Roses" as a teenager, having been given it as a Christmas present, and was captivated. Nearly 40 years later I have recently read "For Love of a Rose". Once one accepts that this is cosy hagiography rather than cinema verité, you have to admit that Antonia Ridge weaves a rollicking good yarn.

The internet is full of her books. They went through many printings and are commonly offered second hand. However the internet has remarkably little to say about the author.

It turns out that there was a lot more to Dutch-born Antonia Ridge (1895 – 1981). She was a broadcaster associated with Children's Hour for which she wrote and read children's plays. She was a librettist, translating the children's songs of Friedrich-Wilhelm Möller (The Happy Wanderer, The Wooden Horse, The Emperor and the Nightingale). And she was a noted childrens' author, translating European children's tales into English. She wrote many, many books including collections of short stories such as "The Handy Elephant" (1946) and "Rom Bom Bom" (1963).

And it is her success as a children's author that gives the clue to the success of her two rose biographies. They are children's stories for adults, and we love them for it.