From France to the Frost: The Botanical Legend of Georges Bugnet

February 27, 1879

Dearest Gardeners,

On this day, Georges Bugnet, that indefatigable French-Canadian plant breeder, was born.

In the early 1900s, George and his young wife left France and settled in Canada, with dreams of prosperity and hopes of returning to their homeland.

In 1905, Bugnet acquired a rugged homestead north of Edmonton in what would come to be known as Rich Valley.

There, amid the raw wilderness and biting cold, he and Julia raised ten children and built a life. Yet it was Georges' unquenchable botanical thirst that truly transformed the barren soil into a garden of marvels.

Despite the physical toll of homesteading in the wilds of Canada, George did not let his classically trained intellect go to waste. In the spring of 1906, when George and Julia arrived on their desolate land, he immediately set about finding trees and plants that would thrive in their northern climate.

He requested cold-hardy trees and shrubs from Canada's Department of Agriculture. He began propagating his own cold-hardy plants and had no qualms about asking anyone for seeds.
George thought strategically about the places on earth with climates as cold or colder than Alberta, and he began studying what they grew. 

The Edmonton Bulletin reported that George sent letters to

…(the French botanist) Mr. Vilmorin (“Veel-morah”),
(the Canadian horticulturist) William Tyrrell Macoun,
to Charles Sprague Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum,
...to Kew, to the Botanical Gardens of Lausanne (“low-sahn”), Switzerland, and…
to the Imperial Gardens of Petrograd,
asking everywhere for seeds of flowers, trees and shrubs that were found ripening in the very far north, or at the highest altitudes in the mountains. 

And from everywhere came a generous response, so generous that they had more than they could properly handle. 

They at once sowed in rows… the shortest-lived seeds, and kept on sowing year after year the toughest of the tribe.

The newly born seedlings were cultivated for a year or two, the plan being to give them a fair start, and after that, catch as catch can the survival of the fittest.

George became a self-taught master of plant breeding.

And whenever he had success, he always shared his work with the experimental farms and research centers in Canada.

But there are three plants, in particular, that, I think, had significant personal meaning to George.

When George longed for the plums of his native France, he began breeding cold-hardy plums. The result was the Claude Bugnet plum, named in honor of George's father.

George bred an apple he called the Paul Bugnet in honor of his and Julia's 14-month-old son, who died in a fire.

His most successful effort became known worldwide: the Thérèse Bugnet ("Tur-ez Boon-Yay") rugosa rose, named for his sister. Thérèse debuted in 1950 after nine years of trials and became instantly popular due to its floriferous nature and cold-hardiness (zone 2).

The Missouri Botanical Garden says,

'Thérèse Bugnet,' a hybrid rugosa rose, is a vigorous, dense, upright, rounded shrub that typically grows 5-7' tall and as wide. 

Old fashioned form which somewhat more resembles a damask rose than a rugosa. 

Features fragrant, ruffled, pink, double blooms (to 4" across).

George lived to be 102. He and Julia were lifelong devout Catholics. In 1945, he wrote these words:

Provided, I suppose, that if you pray: “Thy will be done”, and try to listen often enough, and respond sincerely, to your conscience, life, like a Christmas tree, becomes fully ablaze and loaded with marvels of all shapes and colors. Mine is no exception.

Had any gypsy, when I was twenty-one… truly told my future, I would have laughed in her face. It would have sounded too unbelievable.

As a plant breeder, I thought, at first, our location not at all suitable, yet, out of the very failure in those first attempts to grow “hardy” plants, arose the discovery that we had been led to a most-carefully selected spot to manufacture special [plants], possibly the hardiest in the world.