Josephine's Roses

We owe our modern roses to Napoleon's wife, the Empress Josephine, she of the "not tonight' fame. Less well-known is that she was born Marie Joséphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie in Southrière, St. Lucia--note the 'Rose' in her birth name. It was to prove significant to modern horticulture. Upon her first marriage at age 17, she became Joséphine de Beauharnais until her unfortunate aristo was guillotined. Luckily, she escaped the same fate then met the rapidly rising Napoleon Bonaparte. When he became a public figure, she gave up her plunging décolletage dresses and partying for gardening.

She purchased the Château de Malmaison and its rundown surrounding estate with borrowed funds 1799 while Napoleon was in Egypt. The grounds were landscaped in the English style--much to her husband's horror. Inspired by the horticulturist Andre Dupont, a rose garden was quickly established soon after purchase and Josephine became highly informed on both botany and horticulture, particularly where such concerned roses. Napoleon, having forgiven her for her appalling expensive house, arranged for all seized cargoes of roses and other plants from enemy shipping to be forwarded as fast as possible to Malmaison. There, encouraged by Dupont, Josephine decided to collect every known rose. This was no simple collecting mania. The rose then was an unfashionable, short-flowered shrub of no particular distinction other than as a symbol of past English royalty. With such a collection scientific hybridization was possible, and Josephine's desire to create a better, larger, repeat-flowering rose became a reality. Crossing Province and China roses produced such, known as the Tea rose from its scent, said to bear a resemblance to newly-opened crates of tea from China. Thus was also associated France's culinary traditions. In turn this was used to produce of the Hybrid Perpetual, the foundation of most garden roses today. Sir Joseph Banks, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, was so impressed that he sent her roses. New roses were added to the invoices for plants supplied by the Kennedy nurserymen in London, England. Artists were commissioned to paint flowers from her gardens. These remain incredibly valued records of her achievements.

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Divorced in 1809, poor Josephine could do nothing but retreat to Château de Malmaison and now-magnificent gardens and greenhouses. The following year she hosted the world's first rose exhibition. It was in 1810 that the British and French Admiralties arranged for specimens to pass safely through naval blockade and on to her gardens. She continued to collect and improve roses and their culture until diphtheria claimed her life at the early age of 50 in May 1814. Paintings of about 75 or so Malmaison roses commissioned by Josephine were displayed several years after her death. When that occurred it is usually stated that she had some 250 different roses in the gardens there. However, a French expert believes there were less than 200 rose species and varieties in existence in 1814. No catalogues of her roses were apparently made while she was alive. The rest of the story is one of sorrow. The Château de Malmaison remained vacant for much of the time following her death. As unrest succeeded unrest, republics were reborn, governments toppled as heads had earlier under the guillotine, military and sans culottes alternated to destroy the house and garden. Finally all was finished off during the French-Prussian War in 1870. Unenthusiastically restored and much reduced, the gardens today are a meagre shadow to their former glory. But Napoleon himself has a well-maintained tomb that is the pride of Paris . .