On Saturday, April 15, 2006, I made a pilgrimage to the Sacramento Old City Cemetery's annual Open Garden celebration. I had been hearing from heritage rose fans for months about how beautifully the cemetery had been rehabilitated. The prospect of seeing the restored grounds with renovated plots, repaired headstones, manicured paths, and especially the collection of over 200 hundred different roses, made a long drive eminently worthwhile.
These roses, all old and many found on rose rustle trips throughout Northern California, had been brought together as part of the old cemetery's restoration. Today was their day and I looked forward to seeing in them bloom, the grounds they honored, and the corps of volunteers who provided their upkeep.
I would be in good company. As the interest in heritage roses has grown through the years, more and more people have supported programs such as this one. Organizations such as the Heritage Rose Foundation and the Heritage Rose Groups have grown in membership while the American Rose Society has expanded their antique rose collection and clarified guidelines for the exhibition of old and found roses. For those who have sought out lost roses in obscure locales through the years, these celebrations provide a meeting of the clan and the chance to visit.
Last, but not least, was the anticipation of a rose sale. The offerings would be of the same ilk as the cemetery's permanent collection: some known, many unknown, all little snippets from the history of roses and the settling of the West. Some from the cemetery rose propagation project, some odds and ends from people who were coming to visit, and a generous number from Vintage Gardens in Sebastopol. There were sure to be treasures I would have to find room for in my own garden.
How we all came to be together on a lovely spring morning at this beautiful site is a story worth telling.
In 1850, the loose-knit town of Sacramento suffered a biological catastrophe. A passenger debarked from the steamship "New World" from San Francisco and promptly died. Three weeks later the Oriental Cholera, as it was then called, had killed nearly a thousand locals, including a score of doctors who had ministered to many of them.
With a high water table, poor drainage, the heat of the San Joaquin Valley and questionable sanitation, the village that would later be the state capitol couldn't have been more ripe for this water-borne subtropical disease. Time permitted no better than mass graves. An appeal was soon made to the owner of the highest ground in the area to provide a better spot than the flood-prone hallowed ground first used.
That landowner was John E. Sutter, Sr., the Swiss national whose sawmill in the Sierra foothills was ground zero for the Gold Rush. Sutter, upon becoming a Mexican citizen in pre-statehood California, was entitled to acquire property through a system of land grants. He purchased tracts that included the mill in Coloma, acreage that became Sutter's Fort at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers, and an area of higher ground in town that is the present site of the twenty eight acre Sacramento Old City Cemetery.
The Sacramento City Cemetery after the Gold Rush became a classic "garden cemetery," a concept and reality we modern folk have lost. In a time where flat gravestones are flush to the ground to make mowing easier, we have forgotten a time when the dead held more of a place in our lives. Small crowded church cemeteries had morphed into luxuriant parks with carriage-wide paths, elaborate mausoleums, and grounds for fraternal organizations, the local elite and everyday citizens. Polished granite, imported marble, raised plots, elegant and elaborate neoclassical tombstones were as much in evidence in Sacramento as in any large eastern metropolis. These parklands were the pride of their cities: a place for community events, picnics, sporting events and weddings. These playgrounds for the living complemented nicely with the duties for the dead. Keeping up the family plot, honoring one's forebears, and remembering the history of the community were all part of everyday life and death.
History in this Sacramento cemetery is no further away than the next tombstone. John Sutter's son is buried here as are many of the city's early mayors, at least three early governors and more than half of those cholera victims. In the Hamilton Plot is John, youngest son of Alexander Hamilton, first Treasurer of the United States. Mark Hopkins, who helped build the Union Pacific railroad over the Sierra Nevada mountain range, is ensconced in a 350 ton mausoleum of red granite, its construction such a massive enterprise that a rail-line spur had to be run into the cemetery to carry out the project. Somehow I find this poetically ironic. Twenty-five thousand other souls also reside here including Masons, Odd Fellows, Improved Red Men, and the heroes of any municipality: the firemen. Sacramento had the state's first volunteer fire brigade. Firefighters were honored, as was done in many towns, by having their own plot provided at no cost to them by the city.
Fast forward a hundred years.
This beautiful low rise above the flood plain, born of disaster, desperation and generosity, is a shambles. Broken fences, vandalized plots, weeds everywhere, ground and graves lost to the widening of a boulevard have all taken their toll. But it didn't devolve to this sorry state over night. Across the country the attraction and value of the Victorian garden cemetery had changed. Families moved and didn't keep up the family burial site. There were other cemeteries in which to be buried. Municipal governments were distracted by the unpredictable needs of evolving metropolises. Over the years, what had once been beautiful venues and sources of pride of the larger cities fell on hard times. Fortunes, fashions, and a city's focus shifted over a century, and the Sacramento old city cemetery was no exception.
About twenty plus years ago though, something happened to arrest this decline. A number of people, at first by themselves but eventually rallying around common interests, started to make a difference. If they weren't "preservationists," they were at least a diverse group who realized, "you don't know what you got 'til it's gone." And they didn't want to see this cemetery gone.
George King, a fireman with an historical interest, started to make repairs on the Exempt Fireman Plot, where fellow fire fighters were buried. With the Pioneer Mutual Hook and Ladder historical group, he lobbied the city for improvements. Their fence was fixed, plots were cleaned up, and an historic fire bell that had graced the earliest firehouse in the city was erected on their burial grounds. Mayor Anne Rudin "adopted" a plot and encouraged others to do the same. Dr. Bob LaPerriere, as dedicated an historian as a physician, got the local medical society interested in finding all the physicians buried in the cemetery, including those who died in the cholera epidemic. Out of this revived interest came the Old City Cemetery Committee, at first part of the local historical society.
With a core group of less than a dozen, LaPerriere and others started fund raising events. John Bettencourt, an imaginative local grocer, conducted night time tours with mini-plays at the gravesites of the prominent interred. Mory Holmes, a mortician and restauranteur who owned plots within the cemetery as part of at least one of his businesses, hosted "murder mystery" theater pieces at his local eatery to help the cause. Citizens were vastly amused by the novelty of all this and tolerant of any conflict of interests he might have had. Interest was growing.
As all this was happening, Fred Boutin, internationally known rosarian who had moved to the foothill town of Tuolumne, was asked to give a lecture at the UC Davis campus. He emphasized the importance of documenting roses found in old homesteads, roadsides, and particularly old cemeteries. This theme was a takeoff point for members of the audience, including members of the Yolo and Beyond Heritage Rose Group, to start talking about the status of the cemetery. The group discussed not only what roses remained in the old plots to be inventoried, but also about what a great opportunity this was to help in the cemetery restoration. It was no great leap to imagine the cemetery as a showplace for antique roses.
Boutin had been looking for a place to put his extensive collection of found roses, some with their proper names, many without, that he had discovered in his explorations of the Gold Country and beyond. With the help of Jean Travis, Barb Oliva, Carl Luhn, Stuart Lauters, and many other heritage rose lovers and a year and a half lobbying the city government, the project became reality. An open, sunny area near the north entrance became the Heritage Rose Garden. The Old City Cemetery Committee became it's own entity and now coordinates with a number of plant societies, the city council, the sheriff's department, the firemen and other groups for the overall well being of the grounds.
Fast forward some more.
April 15, 2006, seems like a fine day to see the cemetery. I arrive early, not having been here before, knowing the cemetery is open before the "official" 10 AM start of the Open Garden. Even from the road--the one that now overlies what was once the north border of the cemetery-- I can see spires, polished granite, a lovely wrought iron fence. A yellow 'Lady Banks Rose' defies gravity, scrambling forty feet into an old pine tree. I don't know exactly what I was expecting but am surprised that the gate is open and wide enough to drive through. I'm suddenly on a narrow, carriage-wide road between plots. I should have a top hat and a buggy whip. Angels and urns, John Sutter's son's memorial, a sheriffs' department work crew. Too much to take in all at once but at least as lovely as promised.
I loop back out, find Clay and Jeri Jennings' camper across the street and pull alongside. The Jennings are ardent and active heritage rose lovers who have done much to advance the cause of old roses and never miss an event that helps celebrate them. Next to the camper are roses for the sale. I have a trunkful too, brought for Sheri Berglund and her nursery near Sacramento. Among my donations are good starts of 'Lady Huntingfield', a Clark hybrid tea from Australia not available for sale in this country. How did I come by them? Cuttings from the fall pruning I did as a volunteer at Descanso Gardens.
I say hello to and chat with people I've met at various old rose events. Volunteers bustle about organizing tee shirts and other sale items including something I have to have: a catalogue with all the garden roses arranged alphabetically, by location in the cemetery, and who found them and where. Visitors have wandered off in every direction to admire the garden roses and I tag along with a group I know are really knowledgeable. Their expertise, though, doesn't keep them from having the giddy demeanor of kids in a candy store. And there are bon-bons galore.
In addition to 'Lady Banks' is 'Lady Waterlow', a 1903 hybrid tea splayed in pink glory against a granite monument. 'Odorata,' in iridescent pink, clamors up a juniper while the darker 'Ragged Robin'/'Gloire de Rosamanes' and pink 'Hermosa,' all hybrid chinas once used for rootstock, are all in bloom. These three lovely roses need never apologize for outliving a less hardy rose grafted on top of them at some remote place in time. The meek, indeed, have inherited the earth.
Surprises and beauties appear both inside and out of the plots. 'Rubens,' a blush pink tea from 1859; 'Isobel,' a 1916 McGredy hybrid tea that was found, and until properly identified had gone by the study name "Woodward Single Pink"; 'Tipsy Imperial Concubine,' an old tea rediscovered on a 1990 China trip for unknown roses; ' Mme Lombard,' the multi-hued 1878 tea found so frequently throughout Gold Country cemeteries, it's called "The Cemetery Rose."
With the cool, wet spring, many of the roses aren't yet in as full a bloom as in years past. But 'Excellenz von Schubert,' a hybrid musk known for blooming later, cascades over an arbor, purple and mauve blossoms strung in clusters along long arching canes. Many of these arbors had originally been built by Fred Boutin and new ones of various designs are added as the collection grows. Another exuberant bloomer was 'Souvenir de Mme Leonie Viennot,' a 19th century Climbing tea that strained another of Fred's rebar creations. And what to make of a carmine and mauve unknown multiflora that looks so much like the 'Belle de Crechy' in my garden?
Barb Oliva and other volunteers tour visitors from rose to rose, explaining their histories and patiently answering questions. The 'Eglantine Rose' with it's apple fragranced leaflets and 'White Pearl in Red Dragon's Mouth,' an old china whose name perfectly describes the pale cupped center nestled in dark carmine red are two of Barb's favorites. (Why do the Chinese roses have such fun names?) Barb points out 'Mme Jules Bouche,' an old hybrid tea with large, very double blush flowers, and "Plate Bande," a found polyantha seedling with leaflets so diverse they look like they were borrowed from half a dozen other roses.
Heritage rose sales are about as far from the large commercial enterprises as one can get. Half the roses aren't in commerce, especially the recently discovered; half don't have their original names any more. Most of the known roses are hard to find outside of specialty nurseries like Sherri Berglund's (B And B Nursery & Propagators) or Vintage Gardens Antique & Extraordinary Roses . But all have stories to tell. "Gilbert Plot Hybrid Perpetual"? Sure, saw it on the original family plot on a rustle with Clay and Jeri. "Phillips and Rix China" was brought back from China by the prolific rose authors who lost its nametag on the trip back. (Apparently there is more than one way for a rose to become "lost.") And then there's "Smith Plot Mini." I can't remember whom I'm quoting but I'm told, "Well, it's a mini, and a specimen is going back to Ralph Moore (the great miniature hybridizer, who, at age ninety-nine is still actively working at his Sequoia Nursery in Visalia) to see what he thinks it might be."
Somehow I go home with ten different roses I didn't have. I've wrestled my conscience into submission and taken five teas I know from Descanso and other gardens. It's hard to believe a four inch twig will grow to be 'Autumn,' a Pernetiana hybrid tea from 1930. Three unknown chinas and the polyantha "Plate Bande" complete my menagerie. They should all do well in the heat of the Antelope Valley, I tell myself, impressed by how easily I have rationalized my way into more roses.
It's going to be a long drive home so I have to leave before I get to explore all of the cemetery. Good excuse to come back again. As I thumb through the garden's rose list, there are still so many roses to visit. Who wouldn't want to see "White Rose of York," that, (according to a description in "Cemetery Rose," the newsletter for the Old City Cemetery Heritage Garden supporters) "had traveled from [York] New York in a wagon across the prairies in a wagon train…." And who can't want to see the 'Dainty Bess' whose provenance is, "appeared in garden-'96"? Clearly a rampant case of reverse vandalism. And, lastly, just how ugly can "Ugly Little White Moss" be? To paraphrase Will Rodgers, "I never met a moss I didn't like." We'll just have to see it another day.
As I pull onto the highway heading south towards home I see a series of small gray clouds close ahead. Brush fire? Car wreck? It turns out to be steam puffs from a vintage locomotive pulling old train cars full of happy passengers.
I have to smile: more poetic irony. I started the day with old roses in an old cemetery. I finish with an old steam engine paralleling old Highway 99. Bookends to a day dedicated to preserving and honoring what almost disappeared. Makes me grateful for those who consider old things valuable. Makes me want to get my new roses in the ground.
