The history of Lovell roses and the Peace Rose

June is the time of year we as a community come together for Mustang Days to celebrate, rejoice and to remember days gone by. As part of that celebration, this year we celebrate 60 years of the Mustang Follies. 

The Follies have always been filled with local talent to help us come together, laugh, cry, to share tender moments and to be inspired by those who have much better coordination than I do.

June is also known as the National Rose Month, a month I can really get behind and celebrate and that brings us to another milestone: the 80^th Anniversary of the Peace Rose - a rose that has some ties to Lovell. 

In the early 1920s, a young medical doctor named William Horsley brought his new bride, Glen Croft, to Lovell so that he could practice medicine with her father, Dr. E.W. Croft.

Dr. Horsley also brought a love of roses. He figured out that even in the “not so ideal” soils and climate of the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming, roses could not only survive, but thrive here. One just needed to take a few extra precautions. 

Dr. Horsley became known as the Rose Doctor of Wyoming. As he would travel the world over, for
business or pleasure, he would always be willing to talk about roses and medicine when the need arose, however, one would think that roses were indeed his true love.

During the mid-1930s, Europe was back in political turmoil and a French rose breeder, Francis Meilland, was busy breeding roses. In 1935, he assigned the number 3-35-40 to a promising emerging young rose seedling. This particular rose stood out from the other 800 seedlings that had grown that year. This rose hadn’t even produced flowers yet, not until its second year of growth in 1936, yet Meilland knew that rose 3-35-40 was something special.

Over the next couple of years, as political unrest grew worse, Francis continued to grow and develop his rose 3-35-40, eventually naming it Mme A. Meilland, in honor of his late mother. Finally, in 1939, just before the inevitable invasion of France by Nazi Germany, Francis Meilland cut his newly prized rose into wood cuttings and sent them to his colleagues around the world, hoping that his rose 3-35-40 would survive the new world war.

One of these batches of the rose wood cuttings would come to the United States to rose grower Robert Pyle of the Conrad Pyle Company. Communication was very limited over the next few years due to the war in Europe, however, Robert Pyle did what his friend asked him to do by growing this rose and introducing it to the world.

Soon after the liberation of France in 1944, Meilland asked Field Marshal Alan Brooke if he could name this newly developed rose, 3-35-40 in his honor and for his key role in the liberation. FM Brooke suggested that his name would soon be forgotten by many, but a more enduring name for a rose would be “Peace.”

On April 29, 1945, the Conrad Pyle Company formally introduce the “Peace” rose to the world. This was also the very day that Berlin surrendered to the Allied Forces and hastened the end of World War II.  Later that year, at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations, single long-stem blooming “Peace” roses were given to each delegate with an attached note “We Hope the ‘Peace’ rose will influence men’s thoughts for everlasting world peace.”

The Peace Rose has garnered almost every rose award imagined in every country of the world and was awarded “The World’s Favorite Rose” in 1976 and inducted into the Rose Hall of Fame.

So how did the Peace rose get its ties to Lovell? In June of 1945 at the Portland Rose Festival, Dr. Horsley was “knighted” for his contributions to the rose world under the Rose - Peace. 

Dr. Horsley did more than just grow roses and plant roses in our small part of the world. Dr. Horsley was a director in the National Rose Society for many years, and he traveled all over the United States as an accredited judge for various rose shows. He was always willing to talk about growing roses in the harsh conditions of Wyoming. I can image him telling any budding rosarian at any gathering, “If I can grow roses in Wyoming, you can grow roses here, too.”

Years later, another Lovell rosarian, Mayor Cal Taggart, was “knighted” at the Portland Rose Festival under the Rose – Tropicana.

Household magazine, in May 1955, published an article about Dr. Horsley and his yard full of roses. Pictures show him standing next to his roses and family members. It is stated that he had more than 1,000 varieties of roses throughout his yard and probably more than 1,500 rose bushes. There were another 500 roses planted at the nearby hospital. It was also noted that Lovell had more than double the number of roses planted than people in their town. One of the very reasons why Lovell is known as the Rose City of Wyoming.

Dr. Horsley, who delivered many babies over the years, was known for giving away roses to those mothers. He retired prior to me being born, so I never got a Horsley rose, but I remember my mother talking about her other “baby” roses. Now, I will give my father credit for trying to keep those and other roses alive at the farm I grew up on, but over the years it always seemed that the weeds and elements, including me, took their toll on the roses. I was known to use a red rose bush as second base for several years and that proved to be a prickly situation in more ways than one.

To those who grow roses in Lovell, thank you. It’s a part of our Legends and Legacy. Thank you to the Town of Lovell for keeping the rose gardens alive and beautiful on Main Street. And for those who want to plant a rose but aren’t sure how to keep them alive, there is always tomorrow or next year. It’s not really as hard as you might think.

Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying, “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or we can rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” 

I choose to Rejoice!

Gary Emmett is author of “Growing Roses,” an e-book that can be found on Amazon and other e-book services. He has been growing, planting and selling roses for more than 30 years in the horticulture industry. He also has several YouTube gardening videos at www.Successfulgardens.com.