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Thomas Christopher’s book, In Search of Lost Roses, written in 1994, made celebrities of the Texas Rose Rustlers. The rustlers scoured the Lone Star State for roses planted by early settlers, roses that had been long lost from the nursery trade.
San Diego has its own rose rustlers, Jack and Mary Ann Olson. They have been mapping and identifying old roses in Julian since 1996. Many of these roses were bred more than a century ago and, as in Texas, were planted by early pioneers.
In 1983, the Olsons contacted Miriam Wilkins, founder of the Heritage Rose Society, seeking assistance in identifying a couple of roses they brought to California when they moved from Minnesota. Wilkins was never able to identify the roses, but she kept in contact with the couple and finally convinced them to establish a Heritage Rose Society chapter in San Diego. In 1989, the Olsons called a small group of rose lovers together at their house in La Jolla. They have been the leaders of the Heritage Rose Society of San Diego ever since, arranging garden tours and lectures for members.
At a Heritage Rose Conference at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in 1996, Fred Boutin, former botanist for the institution, drew a map for the Olsons showing locations of old roses in Julian. He spent weekends in the old mining town during the late 1960s and early ’70s while employed at the Huntington. Since then, the Olsons have arranged several “rose rustles” in Julian to view and photograph the roses Boutin mapped, to see which roses were still there, to locate others, and perhaps to take a few cuttings home for rooting.
© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION and © John Blocker.
These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.