Green Roses in Every Color

Oregon grower Peterkort Roses is a sustainable source for boutique blooms.

Flower Magazine

Peterkort Roses is the featured sustainable floral design story for this issue of flower magazine.

Designers count on Peterkort as an important local source for bridal bouquets, boutonnieres, flower girl wreaths and tabletop arrangements. The versatile color palette begins with pure white roses and ends with ones covered in dark, velvety black-red petals. Unlike unscented imported roses, these have a light, pleasing fragrance. Because Peterkort harvests its flowers one day and sells them the next, their roses are super fresh and, as a result, are long-lasting in the vase.

America’s love affair with roses is arguably the number one story in the floral world. According to the Society of American Florists, 187 million roses are produced for Valentine’s Day alone, but only a fraction of those stems are grown domestically.

Most U.S.-grown roses hail from California, which accounts for 75 percent of the nation’s production. Yet in Oregon, Peterkort Roses has raised hybrid teas for the floral trade since the 1930s. The third-generation family farm currently produces 2 million roses annually, using many sustainable growing practices.

“We have this certain niche, and we really want to support the local floral industry,” says Sandra Peterkort Laubenthal, granddaughter of Joseph and Bertha Peterkort, who came to Oregon from Germany and started flower farming in 1923, growing sweet peas, gerberas and pansies.

In the past, the state was home to several commercial cut rose growers, but in the recent decades those operations have either shifted to other crops or folded altogether. “We are an anachronism, but it seems like the ‘City of Roses’ should have its own local rose grower,” Sandra says.

Peterkort’s Oregon-grown roses take center stage in a bountiful arrangement designed by Melissa Feveyear of Seattle-based Terra Bella Floral Design, including dark red spray roses, spicy-orange tea roses and delicate maidenhair ferns. This bouquet also features locally-grown hyacinths, parrot tulips; camellias, sword ferns and pieris clusters – all harvested from the garden; and other sustainably-grown roses and viburnum.

Peterkort’s elegant blooms look vastly different from those softball-sized imported ones that consumers gobble up by the dozen every February 14th. Instead, Peterkort’s 50-plus varieties are closer to what you might find gracing a mixed perennial border in the garden. Specialties include the hybrid tea rose, with upright, spiraled petals; a German-bred hybrid tea that features multi-petal characteristics of an old garden rose; and dainty spray roses with many small blooms on a single stem.

Designers count on Peterkort as an important local source for bridal bouquets, boutonnieres, flower girl wreaths and tabletop arrangements. The versatile color palette begins with pure white roses and ends with ones covered in dark, velvety black-red petals. Unlike unscented imported roses, these have a light, pleasing fragrance. Because Peterkort harvests its flowers one day and sells them the next, their roses are super fresh and, as a result, are long-lasting in the vase.

“I’ve been ordering roses from Peterkort for years,” says designer Melissa Feveyear, owner of Seattle-based Terra Bella Floral Design, who specializes in local and organic flowers. With varieties like ‘Piano Freiland’, a red, peony-shaped rose, and spray roses that last several weeks in an arrangement, Peterkort’s blooms make up in quality what they don’t have in size, she says.

“Because the stems are thinner than (those of) imported roses, they’re very easy to use in hand-tied bouquets. You can group a bunch together for really stunning impact without making the stem feel too bulky for a bride to hold.”

Indeed Peterkort is the last Oregon rose grower, but in fact, customers around the country have begun to discover these boutique blooms. A message on the company’s web site helps to explain their popularity: “What can we say about a bunch of people who are still dedicated to growing cut flower roses in the U.S.? . . . We continue because we are obsessed.”

From top: Norman Peterkort (left) and his sister Sandra Peterkort Laubenthal, are bringing modern-day “green” growing practices to the flower farm that’s been in their family since 1923; Generous grower’s bunches, labeled by grade and variety, fill Peterkort’s stall at the Portland Flower Market; and A clutch of free-range hens (plus one bossy rooster) reside in Peterkort’s greenhouses where they happily feast on weeds and pests that would otherwise diminish the floral crops.

Peterkort’s sustainable practices produce greener blooms:

• During the winter months, Peterkort increases the amount of artificial greenhouse light, thereby producing more roses in less space for the same amount of energy. Energy curtains provide additional insulation as outside temperatures drop. The panels are made of Mylar and are suspended from cables across the greenhouse ceiling, containing heat within when closed.
• Peterkort uses an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) system of biological controls to curb aphids, spider mites and other predator pests.
• Peterkort selects disease-resistant rose varieties and suppresses the spread of fungal diseases by maintaining ideal temperature, humidity and air circulation levels inside the greenhouses and keeping the ground clear of dead leaves and debris.
• A resident clutch of chickens and one rooster not only live inside the greenhouses, they help with weed and pest control. Left to “freely range,” the hens can be found pecking at tasty bugs and weeds in between the flower rows.
• All packaging is recycled and roses are wrapped for market in newspaper purchased from a local charity.

Details: www.peterkortroses.com