A Serendipitous Rose - an amazing story about the discovery of 'Veilchenblau' in a neighbor's yard.
     - by Lanford Wilson and published in the 2000 Heronswood Nursery Ltd. catalog on page 129

     The small whaling village of Sag Harbor was lucky enough to go bankrupt in the 1850's when oil was discovered in Pennsylvania. It was a prosperous, essentially one-industry town on the bay - not the fashionable ocean side of Long Island's South Fork. The solidly middle and upper-middle class houses, built by shipbuilders for whaling captains and their crews, are strong and proper, maybe a little severe. Nothing very fancy, just straightforward and clean. And after 1850 nobody had the money to tear them down and modernize.

     The homes are set close together. The house I bought for a song in 1970 sets in the middle of the block between two similar houses, only 20 feet away. The houses on either side are on wider, shallower lots. My lot is a typical 50 feet wide and a somewhat atypical 240 feet deep, and if I intended to make a garden in that narrow space I had my work cut out.

     There was one small diseased apple tree and one huge, graceful boxwood on the property. A four-car garage stretched across the entire lot about 40 feet from the back door. Between the garage and the house was an old outhouse nobody had bothered to tear down, a big old shed that was collapsing of its own volition, and two rusted cars set on concrete blocks. Everything on the far side of the garage was a hard packed gravel parking lot. In 1989 I bought the tiny parking lot adjacent to the back of the property, making an "L" shaped garden of three "rooms" about 50 feet by 55 feet each.

     I can't really call myself a gardener. Well, I do, but at best I'm someone who perversely enjoys torturing and being tortured by plants. And occasionally delighted. There have been so many misunderstandings and failures (how was I to know Bougainvillea wouldn't grow on Long Island?) that I'm just going to relate one very rewarding, serendipitous occurrence with a plant that is lovely but not at all rare or uncommon. The first garden book I was given was the huge Dictionary of Roses published by The Royal Horticultural Society. It was about 11 inches by 14 inches. Each gorgeous page was divided into maybe nine pictures of individual roses, page after page. Every once in a while there would be only four large photographs; less often a page was divided across with only two pictures. I was turning through, marveling at the variety and beauty, blissfully ignorant of the wearying disappointment of trying actully to grow the god awful taskmasters. I turned the page and there was a life-size photograph, covering the entire page, of the 1909 purple-lavender-blue rambler 'Veilchenblau'. I thought it was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. But where do you find such a plant? The local nurseries at the time offered 'Peace' and 'Blaze'. I've since seen 'Veilchenblau' in a number of catalogs, but that was years later.

     That same afternoon (that should be emphasized, that same afternoon!) I was visiting a neighbor, standing at her back door which was shaded by a lean-to kind of trellis, covered with a tangle of various vines. At one point I looked away and there, not a foot from my face, were a few struggling flowers of 'Veilchenblau'. I was stunned. The flower is immediately recognizable - a few of its small petals are shot through with thin white streaks. I asked if I could have a cutting of the rose. She said incredulously, "There's a rose in there?" I went home with a four-foot branch. Understand I had no idea how to start a cutting. I had no literature on it; I was too ignorant to know literature existed. I had seen my Missouri grandmother start cuttings, so I did as I remembered her doing. I cut the branch into about 10 sticks and stuck them in the ground. Over one I put an upturned Mason jar, I was fairly certain grandmother had done that. It didn't help. I scattered them all over the property - in the sun, in shade, in half sun. The one that stuck (miraculously) was far down the back lot on the north side of the fence that separated me from the empty lot I would later buy. (For three times what I had paid for my house! But I had to have it, it was the lot I cut across on my way to the deli.) It not only struck, it was incredibly vigorous. It bloomed the second year - god, what a grand, awesome feeling, that first successful propagation.

    

     When I bought the lot next door and cut a passage through the grape-stake fence (now covered with needle-point-ivy, another gift) the rose was at the side of the opening. It has now grown up to completely cover an eight-foot-high, six-foot-deep iron arch, and is blooming this morning more gloriously than anything in the garden. Well, actually, this year so many plants are blooming just now at the same time, roses, late peonies, Geraniums, foxgloves, Astilbes, Astrantia, Japanese Iris, that it looks almost more vulgar than beautiful; like maybe the Mayor of New Orleans' little daughter died.

     Across from 'Veilchenblau', on the opposite wall, is a three-year-old seedling from it, exactly true. I've practically given up on roses - the year I decided not to spray I felt very honorable. And, of course, by the time the large shrubs rebloomed in September there wasn't a rose leaf in the garden. Except 'Veilchenblau', which was untouched.

I've just looked through Heronswood's 99 catalog. They don't offer it. Oh, damn. Well, maybe it isn't all that special, and it is certainly available in other catalogs, but understand why, to me, it exemplifies everything that can be finally satisfying about this- what? I guess, obsession.