Mom’s rose is clearly visible from my kitchen window. I planted it where I could see it daily, regardless of the season. The two of us, the rose and I, lived in temporary circumstances for quite a while before we were each given a place to call “home,” a place to put down our roots and become established. The rose bush spent several years in a large container; I had lived with a daughter and her family before passing through several apartments on my pathway to permanency.
A surprise gift, my father gave me the rose bush after Mom passed away. A start from her favorite rose, it was just a tiny thing, rooted from a stem he cut and placed in the ground. Dad was a farmer, not a gardener. That he took the time and made the effort to propagate a rose cutting with me in mind makes it that much more meaningful.
Given the length of time civilization has been in existence on this earth, the advent of nurseries and garden centers where flowers, plants, shrubs, and trees are readily available for purchase has been a recent development.
Prior to that, plant sharing and seed exchanges between neighbors and friends were the foundation of gardens. Often a cutting, usually a stem, leaf, or root was cut from a plant and placed either in water or moist soil to promote growth. Perhaps a shrub was rooted by simple layering--bending and burying a low-growing branch in the ground or the roots of perennial flowers were separated, divided, and shared. Scions, branches cut from fruit trees, were either placed in a planting medium where they took root or grafted onto trees, the beginnings of new orchards or expansion of existing ones. Vegetable and flower plants were allowed to fully mature, the seedpods removed, saved, and exchanged. In generations past, century upon century, they were the methods used for proliferation of house plants, vegetable and flower gardens, and orchards.
What is it about gifted plants, either starts, seeds, or plants which come from another that make them special? Over the years my own garden has been filled with them: daffodil bulbs given by an aunt, a mother, a grandmother; an intoxicatingly fragrant daphne odora, the cutting taken one Sunday morning after church by my mother from one at my childhood church home, placed in a little container of water on the kitchen window sill and rooted; a Joseph’s Coat climbing rose transplanted from my daughter’s garden; raspberry starts from my father’s patch; a peony root given by an elderly client, just before she passed away; a hearty fuchsia shrub from my mother-in-law, its origins going back to her ancestral home. There are plenty of plantings in my garden gifted by a friend whose own garden has to meet a deer-proof criterion. When the deer ignored the deer-resistant plant list, I was the recipient of several of her shrubs.
Nurseries are filled with plants, shrubs, and trees to buy, but none carry the emotional importance of those which have been given, shared, passed down. Gardens are a living thing, always a work in progress. For me, gifted plants carry with them a sense of the one who gave them to me. When I tend those plants and shrubs shared by friends and family, I am reminded of them, their presence, and their role in my life. As I look out the window at my beautiful rose with its stunning blooms, I do not see just a plant, I see “Mom’s rose,” and I remember those who bore me, raised me, loved me, and who are no longer on this earth. What a gift, in plain view from my kitchen window.
This past fall, I took several cuttings from that same rose bush, placed them in soil, and covered them with plastic containers. At Christmas time, after checking for roots, they were lovingly transplanted into containers prepared with beautiful, composted soil and given to each of my four children. In this first summer of life, there are reports of blooms. Mom’s rose has been perpetuated to bring pleasure to her grandchildren. Living gifts from the past, carried forward into the future.
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