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(08/06/25) Gonzales, LA. — A quick glance at Peggy Martin’s Gonzales, Louisiana, home, and it’s clear she loves plants. Paintings and prints of flowers line her walls, tablecloths pop with colorful flora, potted plants fill corners and bouquets dot shelves and end tables. Her yard is an oasis of greens, pinks, reds and purples.
Growing along her garden gate is an extraordinary plant with a storied past, a prolific blooming vining rose that bears her name, the Peggy Martin rose.
Martin’s garden pales in comparison to the paradise she had in the town of Phoenix, Louisiana, in lower Plaquemines Parish. Nestled near the Mississippi River, her property bloomed with more than 1,000 plants, including 450 antique roses.
“I just kept collecting all kinds of plants,” Martin recalled. “It was a very beautiful place.”
It was there in 1989 that she first planted a rose with no name or origins she could ascertain. The rambling rose grew up a pole and along the corrugated roof of a tractor shed. But her paradise was lost 20 years ago when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.
Her property was bounded by a bayou and the river. The storm’s surge inundated the area with 30 feet of water that stayed there for two weeks. Martin’s parents, who lived on the adjoining property and didn’t evacuate, died in the storm.
“We went back to see if we could salvage anything. It was like Hiroshima. Everything was black, trees were denuded, just sticks everywhere,” Martin said.
Amid the devastation, Martin did notice a hint of green — rose canes still alive by her tractor shed.
“I thought, how is this alive when everything is completely dead? I was totally blown away by it,” she said. “I felt like my mom and dad knew I was going to be distraught, and they asked God to leave me something,” she said.
It was the nameless rose, a cutting of which was passed to
Martin from a friend whose mother-in-law had grown it in New Orleans’ Garden
District. Martin had spent years trying to have it identified. Rose breeders and
enthusiasts from across the country and as far away as India and Australia had
visited Martin’s home and no one was able to nail down the rose’s provenance.
Peggy Martin stands beneath the Peggy Martin rose growing along a fence at her home in Gonzales, Louisiana. The rose was named for Martin after it survived being inundated with water for several weeks on her Plaquemines Parish property after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Photo by Eddy Perez/LSU
She’s heard stories of the rose growing on plantations and in gardens across Louisiana, passed down through generations.
“My theory is that it’s from the 1800s. They ordered roses from France because they didn’t have nurseries down there,” she said.
William Welch, a horticulturist from Texas A&M University and longtime friend of Martin’s, had visited her garden before the storm and taken cuttings of the mysterious rose.
After Katrina, he called Martin with an idea. Welch proposed naming the rose after her and using it to raise funds for hurricane recovery.
“At that time, I was just like a zombie, going through grief and terrible stuff. But I was happy they wanted to use it and use my name,” Martin said.
The rose became the centerpiece of a national restoration effort led by the Garden Club of America. Proceeds from its sales helped restore historic gardens in New Orleans; Biloxi, Mississippi; and Beaumont, Texas.
LSU AgCenter horticulturist Ed Bush called the rose extremely unique for its ability to survive under harsh conditions. He said when brackish floodwater covered the property, soil would have become hypoxic — lacking oxygen needed for plants to survive. That this rose did is astonishing.
“This is a plant that can tolerate a wide range of conditions — salt, pest problems and poor soil — which is not typical of a rose,” Bush said.
Peggy Martin rose blooms along a fence at the LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens at Burden. The climbing rose was named a Louisiana Super Plant. Photo by Anna Ribbeck/LSU AgCenter
Peggy Martin holds the children’s book that tells the story of the rose that bears her name. Photo by Tobie Blanchard/LSU AgCenter
The Peggy Martin rose grows on an arbor at the LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens at Burden. Photo by Anna Ribbeck/LSU AgCenter
The LSU AgCenter named the Peggy Martin rose a Louisiana Super Plant, and it is a staple in Southern gardens and beyond. Its popularity grows year after year.
“I get so tickled because every year, it just blows up Facebook. Everybody wants to put pictures of their Peggy Martin rose,” Martin said. “A nursery owner told me they can’t keep it in stock. They’ll get 3,000 in, and in three weeks, they’re all gone.”
The rose’s appeal lies in its beauty and resilience. It thrives in heat and humidity, resists disease, blooms prolifically and can grow well in different climates. She has seen it growing in New England and California.
“It grows and grows and grows. It’s very healthy. You don’t have to do anything to it,” Martin said.
Now in her 70s, Martin still tends to her antique roses, though fewer than before, and still travels, though closer to home now, to talk about the rose that now bears her name.
