When they’re good, they’re very, very good
Clair MARTIN is a taskmaster. Wilt under his high standards, and you’ll find yourself on the recycling heap. Produce results that are below expectations, and he’ll come at you with a shovel.
Still, Martin’s strict attitude toward horticulture has created some of the most revered and spectacular roses in the country. For nearly 22 years, Martin has served as curator of roses at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, securing an international reputation as an influential and downright tough rosarian.
“We have a saying here at the Huntington: We prune with a shovel,” said Martin. “I give a rose three years to produce. If they give me only a few blooms a year, you have to ask yourself if they’re worth the dirt they’re planted in.”
During Martin’s tenure at the Huntington, plenty of rosebushes have ended up in the mulch pit. He deemed ‘William Shakespeare’ -- a maroon-colored rose produced by English hybridizer David Austin -- a “real dog” because it was scraggly and it rarely flowered. (Austin responded by producing a new plant, which he called ‘William Shakespeare 2000.’) ‘Proud Land’ -- a red hybrid tea rose -- recently bit the dust. And ‘Royal Highness’ -- a light pink hybrid tea -- is on the watch list.
An army of volunteers, who turn out on Tuesdays with Felco cutters in hand, are accustomed to Martin’s no-nonsense approach. “If a rosebush isn’t doing well, it’s out,” said volunteer Martha Burkard. There’s just not enough space in the 2 1/2-acre garden to have it any other way.
“My job is to grow the greatest diversity of roses as possible,” said Martin, who has more than 1,200 varieties under his care. “I enjoy the challenge of a new thing.”
Some of his garden experiments, such as planting antique and English roses, have helped spur a national trend for more old-fashioned-looking roses in domestic gardens. He has written two books on the subject: “100 Old Roses for the American Garden,” released in 1999, and “100 English Roses for the American Garden,” two years earlier.
He finds it fascinating that he can grow a rose, ‘Autumn Damask,’ that was once praised by the Roman poet Virgil. Or grow the ancient ‘Apothecary’s Rose,’ brought back from the Crusades by Count Thibaut. He loves to tell the story of Napoleon’s soldiers raiding ships at sea to loot rosebushes for Josephine, whose large collection at Malmaison was instrumental in establishing the rose’s popularity in 19th century gardens.
“For me personally, as for others, the rose acts as metaphor for the human condition,” Martin wrote in his book on old roses. “Its history is our history.
“The flower and humanity have co-evolved to the point that to understand the rose and where it came from is to understand a little of where we’ve been and where we are going.”
Martin’s own first recollections of roses are of those in the garden of his stepfather’s mother in southeastern Kansas. He remembers that they were red, with some pink. But most of all, he remembers the musky smell filling the air on humid afternoons. “Fragrance is one of the things that is tied up to memory, and those were happy memories,” said Martin, 60.
Martin started growing roses after he moved from Kansas City to California 30 years ago and went to work managing a retail nursery in Orange County. In the late 1970s, as a volunteer, he became interested in the roses at the Huntington. In 1982 he was appointed to the curator’s position, allowing him to create and oversee a complete redesign of the estate’s rose garden. He made the garden more formal and, at the same time, more accessible.
He carved paths to the hybrid tea roses and floribunda roses in the western half of the garden. While draping a variety of climbing rose over arbors and arches, Martin established a larger area for antique roses. He was determined to find specimens of some of the oldest rose cultivars on the planet, and the idea of antique roses just seemed to fit into the Huntington’s ambience.
Martin and a group of his rosarian friends rustled for ancient roses at cemeteries in California’s Gold Country and at old haciendas in Mexico. They brought cuttings back to the Huntington to propagate in the nursery there. Eventually, the plot Martin made for old roses was filled with unusual cultivars such as ‘Lady Hillingdon,’ a luxuriant yellow rose from 1910; the ancient ‘Alba Semi-Plena,’ one of the oldest forms of the white rose; and ‘Empress Josephine,’ named for the lady herself.
As word got out that Martin was successfully growing ancient roses at the Huntington, nurseries requested clippings so they could propagate the roses for commercial sale. Martin happily agreed. “That’s part of our mission here, to preserve these old roses,” Martin said. “We want to make sure they don’t become extinct.”
With the antique rose patch established, Martin was ready for his next project. He and fellow rosarian Sharon Van Enoo heard about Austin’s heralded attempts to cross old roses with modern ones, creating the quintessential English rose. Martin and Van Enoo sent away for a few plants. They were amazed at how well Austin’s billowy, multi-petaled roses fared in Southern California’s climate.
Martin created two large patches on the rose garden’s eastern edge as a test area for even more Austin roses, which quickly flourished. The success opened the door for Austin to sell his roses at nurseries across the United States.
“Clair and I basically like unusual and different roses,” said Van Enoo, who has worked as a volunteer with Martin at the Huntington for the last 15 years. “The Austins just fit into the garden very nicely.”
When he’s not in the garden, Martin is often out lecturing on roses. Recently he started a website (home.earthlink.net/~misterprickles/ejournal/current/index.htm) where rose enthusiasts can share information. “Clair has contacts all over the world,” said Roger Phillips, who has written a number of books in England on rose gardening. “He is a leader in America in finding new developments in roses.”
For his next undertaking, Martin is looking to reintroduce old Chinese roses at the Huntington’s Chinese garden, which will be the largest of its kind in the United States when finished later this decade. He also continues to give personal garden tours -- and advice -- to Huntington visitors.
“Clair is a lot of fun to listen to because he talks about roses as if they had real personalities,” Van Enoo said. “To this day, I can’t prune a rose until I know the name of the rose. That’s one thing I learned from Clair: The name tells me the characteristics.”
With tales of his “shovel-pruning” constantly making the rounds at work, Martin said he has come to realize that he’s considered a bit colorful.
“I don’t think you can be a plants person without being a character,” Martin said. “I have no explanation for it, but it just seems to be the way.”
