(A bud vase of roses on my mother’s dresser)

John McCrea was a gardener. When I knew him, he specialized in flowers, especially roses, dahlias, and amaryllis in the winter. But he had a long history of gardening in various places around the globe. More on that on another occasion.
At our summer house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, John had a rose garden. It was not elegantly designed, but it was substantial. It contained tree roses as well as bush roses, and John spent considerable time tending his charges with water and fertilizer. Although I never thought of him as the organic gardening type, he used to buy shipments of ladybugs, which he launched among the roses to attack the aphids.

The fruits of John’s efforts were prolific and visible. Bunches of fragrant roses arranged by my mother were displayed downstairs in the house. John usually wore a rose in the button hole of his jacket lapel. One particularly fond memory of summer weekends in Marblehead was the appearance of a small bud vase of fresh roses on my bedroom bureau. These bud vases were filled and placed there by John, not my mother.

Some years ago when I toured Springwood, the Roosevelt family house in Hyde Park, I noticed a bud vase of fake roses on a bureau in one of the bedrooms. I felt an immediate flash of recognition and recollection of Marblehead summers past. I wondered whether John’s bud vases could have been inspired by the Roosevelts. He had visited Springwood in the summertime.

After my visit to Hyde Park last week, I emailed Paul Sparrow, director of the FDR Library and Museum, to ask if he knew anything about the bud vase I had seen in a bedroom at Springwood. To my surprise, he responded immediately that roses for guests were indeed a Roosevelt family tradition. John greatly admired the gracious thoughtfulness of the president and his wife. While I can’t know 100% for certain, I feel sure that John’s practice of placing roses in the bedrooms at Marblehead was an homage to the Roosevelts. What a lovely connection!