The Santa Barbara Rose Society presents “Santa Barbara’s ‘Padre of the Roses’ Father George Schoener”

Father Schoener moved to Santa Barbara in 1917 and lived at 125 Milpas, where he based his nursery and hybridizing work. Schoener is the creator of ‘Arrillaga’ a beautiful pink Hybrid Perpetual now at the A.C. Postel Rose Garden, and ‘Schoener’s Nutkana’ a charming single dark pink rose bred from a native species rose, R. nutkana, that has extreme total disease resistance. Father Schoener was an early advocate of breeding for disease resistance.

In the 1920s and 1930s Father Schoener was a world-famous horticulturalist like Luther Burbank and in 1937 Paramount Pictures made a short newsreel about his work in Santa Barbara and the “Avenida de las Rosas” which he created on Milpas Street.

March 21, 2014 will mark the 150th Anniversary of Father Schoener’s birth so we’re on a one-year count-down, planning how to celebrate this forgotten local hero. Father Schoener’s grave in Calvary Cemetery is seldom visited and no roses mark his last resting place. His home and nursery now lie under the 101 freeway.

This Power Point presentation will be given by SBRS Board members Linda Buzzell-Saltzman and SBCC Professor Alyse Steidler.