Cemetery Heritage Roses - Roses are read

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Roses are read…

Their colourful outbursts and perfume brighten the gloomiest of cemeteries, but their role goes beyond cosmetic. Helen Leggatt explains how the family historian can learn more from the roses their ancestors chose to plant on loved ones’ graves

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xactly when the first rose was planted in New Zealand, and by whom, remains as shrouded in mystery as the origins of the flower itself. Needless to say, the flower is not a native of the southern hemisphere, and found its way, perhaps via Australia, to New Zealand’s shores as early as 1814 aboard ships transporting the country’s first settlers.

Able to be reared in a tea cup, old roses, or heritage roses, were easily transported and successfully transplanted into settlers’ gardens and hedgerows. Their vibrant hues transformed foreign vistas into landscapes reminiscent of home and perhaps symbolised the newcomers’ hope of a civil society in the making.

Growing conditions were so favourable, particularly on the North Island, that when Charles Darwin arrived at Paihia in the Bay of Islands, North Island, in 1835 he observed: It was quite pleasing to behold the English flowers in the gardens before the houses; there were roses of several kinds,

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honeysuckle, jasmine, stocks and whole hedges of sweetbriar. (Voyage of the Beagle, vol. 3, p. 197)

CEMETERY ROSES The Victorian fashion of planting roses in cemeteries was one observed by many New Zealand settlers, regardless of class. Cemeteries soon became emblazoned with their blooms; the air infused with their heady scent. Unfortunately, the rigours and transient nature of settler life often led to the plants being abandoned and neglected.

Indeed, by the mid-1800s letters of complaint from disgruntled cemetery-goers were already peppering the press, bemoaning the swathes of overgrown roses taking over gravestones, their thorny suckers tearing across pathways.

Today New Zealand’s oldest cemeteries continue to shelter some of the best examples of early heritage rose varieties in the world.

They have survived years of sometimes overly zealous tidy-up campaigns and seem to have thrived on neglect.

This page Deep shades of roses, such as William Lobb, were often planted on men’s graves Left Indica Major adorns the burial plot of Robert Mackay, a printer from Roslyn (Dunedin), who died December 17, 1886

Nancy Steen (1898–1986), dubbed the doyenne of rosarians in New Zealand, discovered an old rose variety in Auckland’s Grafton cemetery. The Marie Ducher was previously thought to have died out but, thanks to Steen’s endeavours and passion for old roses, this variety was subsequently re-introduced into Europe.

LIVING MEMORIALS It wasn’t just for their landscape-enhancing qualities that roses were chosen to adorn cemeteries. In much the same way as roses were carved onto headstones in various forms to symbolise deep affection or the life stage of the deceased, so their planting on burials, or memorial planting, held meaning, too.

Planted above the head end of a burial, to prevent disturbance during subsequent interments, roses were used to beautify many exposed and inhospitable plots. They often remained the only grave marker until a senior family member died, at which time a headstone may have been erected.

Rose cuttings were often sourced from the deceased’s family garden, perhaps from a plant that travelled with them from their homeland, forging a link between the living and the final resting place.

Serenade to the rose

Mark not my grave with stone or sculptur’d urn, I want no labour’d art where I repose; When life is past, and I to dust return I’d lie beneath the shadow of a rose.

Plant me a rose my resting place to hide!

The crystal drops of dew her petals weep, Will seem like tears she could not brush aside, While at her feet her lover lies asleep.

— John Kendrick Blogg (1851–1936). An industrial chemist, wood-carver and poet, Blogg was born in Toronto, Canada, and migrated to Victoria in 1877. This was his last poem.

The Northern Cemetery, a 20-acre Victorian cemetery in Dunedin, boasts 100 or so early memorial plantings, some of which continue to grow on the graves they were lovingly chosen for more than a century ago.

Heritage Roses Otago, which looks after the memorial roses at the cemetery, has spent years caring for and recording the memorial plantings 

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Opposite page A Félicité Perpétue bloom close up

and heritage roses that grow throughout the sprawling site. Using burial records, a Memorial Roses Register has been created linking the memorial roses with the individuals for whom they were planted. This register reveals an interesting trend in the choice of colour and type of rose associated with burials.

White roses, associated with purity and innocence and the second colour of mourning, were often planted on the graves of children or young, unmarried women. Heritage Roses Otago’s records show a double white rose (Blanc Double de Coubert) grows on the burial plot of the stillborn twin sons of Anna and Robert Stout, one of Dunedin’s early leading families. * Male burials, in contrast, were often adorned with bold roses of deep red or mauve. Varieties such as William Lobb, The Bishop and Tuscany, all strongly coloured roses, are only found on the graves of men.

There are always exceptions to the rule and memorial roses may have been chosen for a variety of reasons, perhaps to express a person’s personality, status or even occupation. The wife of Dunedin confectioner John Thom chose the

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icing-sugar white of Félicité Perpétue for her husband’s plot in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery, which can still be seen 123 years later clambering up the Irish yews his wife Margaret also placed on his grave.

In Australia, too, an old rose register is being compiled. Patricia Toolan, 2002 Churchill Fellow and conservator of old roses, is researching and collating information for a book that will detail old roses of significance along with their location on grave plots across South Australia.

Roses marked the arrival and, for many of New Zealand’s settlers, the departure from life in the remote British colony. It is thanks to the country’s rosarians and historians that the history of the rose and its link to the lives, and deaths, of early pioneers continues to be researched and precious old varieties identified and preserved.

FAMILY ROOTS Have you spied a rose planted on any of your ancestors’ graves? Do you know what variety it is?

Perhaps there is a family tradition of tending a memorial planting? If you spy a rose growing on an ancestor’s grave, can you find the same rose

Illustration Rohana Archer Photography Heritage Roses Otago

growing in a family garden or on another family burial plot? Maybe you have a dried flower tucked away in a family bible or with a funeral card? The Victorians often sent photographs of burial plots to distant relatives, some accompanied by pressed flowers picked from the associated memorial planting.

So, next time you stroll through a cemetery don’t just stop to smell the roses, try reading them, too .  ✻ A writer, taphophile and self-confessed internet

addict, Helen Leggatt loves to combine her passion for genealogical and local history research with technology. Helen runs Hunting Kiwis, a cemetery recording project in Canterbury. Read about Helen’s work at http://genealogyjourno.wordpress.com and join her on Twitter at @GenealogyJourno

The Roses of the Dunedin Northern Cemetery (Heritage Roses Otago, NZ$5 + p&p) was published in 2010. Copies are available from the Sexton’s Cottage at the cemetery or Fiona Hyland at 167 Signal Hill Rd, Opoho, Dunedin 9010, New Zealand, or by email at f.hyland@ihug.co.nz.

For more information on heritage roses, visit www.

HeritageRoses.org.nz or www.heritage.rose.org.au

*

Cemeteries with memorial rose plantings to visit New Zealand ✻ Bolton Street Memorial Park, Wellington (see www.boltoncemetery.org.nz) ✻ Pauatahanui Public Burial Ground, Wellington (see www.pcc.govt.nz/About-Porirua/ Porirua-s-heritage) ✻ Northern Cemetery, Dunedin (see their Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/phKe2J) ✻ Grafton St Cemetery (in Symonds St Cemetery, Auckland) (see www.aucklandcity.govt.nz) Australia ✻ Mitcham Anglican Cemetery, South Australia (see www.mitchamcouncil.sa.gov.au and click on “Community”) ✻ Gore Hill Cemetery, New South Wales (see www.willoughby.nsw.gov.au/Library and click on “Collections”) ✻ Rookwood Cemetery, New South Wales (see www.rookwoodcemetery.com.au) ✻ Blakiston Cemetery, South Australia

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