The Rambler Birthplace (GardenDesignOnline)

Become a Fan

Unless you're really into roses, you've probably never heard of Michael Walsh. But he's very well-known in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where a small and charming memorial notes his valuable contributions to the rose trade.
He's credited with development of the rambling rose, but he also won many awards for his hybrid teas and others.

Born in Wales in 1848, Walsh moved to Woods Hole at age 27 to work for the Fay family. Joseph Story Fay was a wealthy cotton broker, but he also had a great interest in horticulture. Walsh tended the Fay's several acres of gardens, and began developing and testing new roses. In his heyday, Walsh put out a catalogue, "Walsh's Handbook of Roses," and shipped thousands of rose plants every year from Woods Hole. His ramblers came from crossing old garden roses with Rosa multiflora and Rosa wichuraiana, and the result was profusely-flowering long-caned shrubs. In 1907, the Boston Evening Transcript wrote that the famous Fay gardens at Woods Hole were visited by flower lovers from all over the country, who came to see the "fifty-five thousand rose plants in bloom."

Some of Walsh's winnners included the hybrid tea "Jubilee," for which he received the first Gold Medal awarded in the United States by the American Rose Society. Among his other winners were "Excelsa," a bright double red; and the pink "Lady Gay." Some of his most popular roses included "Evangeline," pale pink and fragrant, and "Hiawatha," a dark red single-petaled rose with a white eye. Many of the roses Walsh developed can still be found around New England, but unfortunately, most of them are now out of commerce. (But of course, you can still get some of these in England ... one source is Peter Beales Roses).

So let's hear it for all those dedicated folks who are in the business of finding and saving old roses.

A small memorial to Michael Walsh was erected by the Falmouth, MA Garden Club in 1943, next to the old Fay estate. A simple stone monument reads: "Near this place lived Michael H. Walsh, who made The Rambler Rose world famous. Maintained by the Falmouth Garden Club."