The rose that survived Hurricane Katrina—and now blooms across the country
Its origin is a mystery, but the Peggy Martin rose weathered weeks underwater after one of America’s most devastating storms. After it was discovered, the rose became a symbol of hope and resilience.
“It used to be such a beautiful place,” Peggy Martin recalls of her home before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast 20 years ago.
After two weeks underwater, her 12-acre property in Phoenix, Louisiana—and collection of 450 varieties of antique roses—“looked like Hiroshima,” she says. “Any roses or shrubs that I had were black dead sticks and grey ash.”
But when she returned a couple weeks later to see what she could salvage from the wreckage, one rose wasn't black like the others. Although stripped bare by 150-mile-an-hour winds, “it was dark green, dark forest green,” she recalls.
Peering closer, she saw an inch of new growth from its long, draping limbs. “My God. How did this survive?” she thought.
Of all her roses, this was the only one left—and she didn’t even know what it was called.
Now called the Peggy Martin or Katrina rose, this mysterious flower has become known for surviving weeks of saltwater flooding left in the aftermath of the storm and has becoame one of the most popular climbing roses in the southern U.S.
Surviving Hurricane Katrina
When the hurricane hit, many gardens were destroyed, amd entire trees were blown over by high winds.
“A plant can't pick up its roots and walk away,” says Ed Bush, a professor at Louisiana State University College of Agriculture. “It can't swim like a fish, and it can't run like a mammal.”
While Peggy's yard sat under 20 feet of water, her plants endured hypoxia—low oxygen—and anoxia—no oxygen.
“The roots need oxygen so a plant basically could suffocate right off the bat,” says Bush.
In the water, there were insects and disease, and it would have been murky, preventing photosynthesis when sunlight couldn’t reach the leaves, he says.
Saltwater in particular is challenging for garden plants to withstand. Although some can tolerate saline waters, “salt kills plants,” says Andrew King, assistant professor at Texas A&M AgriLife Research. “That's what herbicides are made out of: various kinds of salts.”
Roses are not known for their salt tolerance. Of Peggy’s roses, the Peggy Martin was only survivor. In addition to her lone rose, only one other plant in her yard survived: a crinum lily bulb—less notable, says King, because “bulbs are pretty tough.”
A found rose
Peggy had been collecting antique roses since 1974. In 1989, her hairdresser gave her two rooted cuttings from a rambling rose growing in her mother-in-law’s garden. It was healthy with deep roots and produced stunning pink blooms every spring and fall.
“It took my breath away,” Peggy says of the first time she saw one. “The entire wooden fence was smothered with roses. It was blooming at that time—a solid mass of flowers.”
Peggy thinks the rose traveled from Europe to the U.S. in the 19th century because her cutting came from a part of the state rumored to have imported roses from France at that time, but it didn't have a scientific name—no-one knew its parentage.
Roses that don’t have a clear provenance are known as found roses, pass-along plants, or heirloom plants, says Bush. “When a gardener has an exceptional plant, they basically pass it along to their friends.”
A Louisiana super plant
Before Hurricane Katrina struck her home, Peggy had contacted experts to ask about this special rose. “Nobody had ever seen it before,” she says.
Renowned rose expert William Welch from Texas A&M University was already aware of—and impressed by—the rose. Before the storm, he’d taken cuttings from Peggy and got her roses to root. “Then, all of a sudden, Katrina comes along, and it becomes apparent that this rose is even more remarkable than he thought,” says King.
Welch named the rose after Peggy, and sales of its cuttings and offspring went toward a Garden Club of America restoration fund for gardens that were ruined in the hurricane. It was later recognized by the horticulture industry as a Louisiana Super Plant for its ability to survive harsh conditions.
The combination of its hardiness, its mysterious provenance, and Peggy’s story made it a sought after flower among gardeners.
“I can point you to a number of fantastic roses, and people don't beat the door down for the other roses like they do for this one,” says King. “It's impossible not to think of [Peggy], and all those people who lost so much, and yet they came through it.”
Despite the rose’s incredible resilience, not much formal scientific testing has been done.
“Not as much as you would think is known about the Peggy Martin rose,” says Bush. “Time has been the best research for that plant.”
Hope in the face of adversity
Across the U.S., the Peggy Martin rose has become a symbol of hope and perseverance. For Peggy, it's much more personal.
Her 82-year-old parents, who didn't evacuate, both drowned on the property. The sheriff’s department “found them floating in the front yard,” she says.
When Peggy finally returned home, she came across her mother's bedroom slipper on the driveway—a tragic reminder of her awful loss.
Yet there in her garden was a lone survivor—the rose. “In my heart, I feel that mom and dad asked God to leave me something,” she says, “because they knew I was going to be totally devastated.”
