How many life stories are hidden behind the name of a flower? I’m thinking of Julia’s Rose, which a recent fall of rain has brought galloping into bloom, a strongly scented rose of unique tawny buff colouring.
Julia’s extraordinary colour – variously described as cappuccino, copper and even latte tinted lilac – came from her parents, the slightly weird, greyish mauve Blue Moon and old gold Dr. A. J. Verhage.
These roses were formerly classified as hybrid teas (now bush roses) whose characteristics were high, pointy buds and long stemmed, repeat flowering blooms popular with florists.
She (Julia) recognised flowers could unearth creativity and bring beauty into people’s lives and inspire them...
So who was Julia? Engaged recently in a little displacement activity - I should have been scrubbing spuds or even, horrors, ironing - I started reading a tattered old English newspaper containing an obituary of a woman who had died in November 2010 aged 104.
Described as the high priestess of flower arrangement, she was said single handedly to have introduced over two million women world-wide to the art of arranging flowers. Called Julia Clements, she’d had no less than three roses named for her: Julia Seton, Julia Clements and my own Julia’s Rose.
Born Gladys Agnes Clements in April 2006, Julia (as she later became) left school at 14 and worked as a secretary before becoming a freelance writer. She was adventurous and loved travel, and after working for the Red Cross during World War 2, she accepted an invitation in 1947 to address the International Flower Show in New York. On returning home, Kent Area Women’s Institute asked her to talk about this trip.
Facing a group of war-weary women who, as she later put it, had for years lacked any creative outlet with their furnishings, clothes and food, she tore up her script, seized a bowl of flowers from the table and produced a simple arrangement similar to those she’d seen in the US.
She kept emphasizing this was something her audience could do for themselves, even in winter with leaves and cones. Afterwards she was mobbed by women wanting her to address their own groups.
Realising that teaching flower arranging was something she was meant to do, she studied colour and design, visited gardens, attended lectures and by early 1950s was working 24/7, writing, lecturing and organising festivals at home and around the world.
In 1974 she received the Royal Horticultural Society’s highest award, the Victoria Medal of Honour, and was appointed OBE in 1989.
Julia was uninterested in money and never owned a property. Her second husband, Sir Alexander Seton, died a year after their marriage.
Her hectic, cosmopolitan life was light years away from a gardener’s existence in NSW with its droughts, roos and rabbits, yet I think we have something important in common.
She recognised flowers could unearth creativity and bring beauty into people’s lives, comforting and inspiring them to overcome material struggles and deprivation.
Isn’t this what our gardens do for us?
Heads Up: Julia’s Rose is available bare rooted by mail order from Treloar Roses (www.treloarroses.com.au/) $15.95 plus delivery.
