WAHPETON, N.D. -- If you're having a busy day in Wahpeton and decide to stop and smell the roses, thank Clarence George.
George's lush rose garden is one of the highlights at Chahinkapa Zoo.
"We always say he adds color," says zoo director Kathy Diekman. "In our guest register, we see, 'What a beautiful zoo.'" The roses "add the whole aesthetics to the zoo."
In fact, Diekman says, the garden now is marked with a sign pointing out "Clarence's roses."
George, 76, is a retired pharmacist who spent most of his life in Wahpeton but now lives in Ottertail, Minn. He has been raising roses since the 1950s, when two regular customers at his store in Fairmount, N.D., got him interested. "I just was fascinated by them," he recalls.
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His first big project was a 200-blossom patch near his Wahpeton home, which was located in sight of a highway.
"This one particular June, the cars would come to an abrupt stop" to admire the roses, he says.
George planted roses around the zoo years ago, but many had to be moved and others were destroyed during the 1997 flood.
But the flood proved to be an opportunity for a bigger, better rose garden at the zoo.
"I used the '97 flood as an excuse for getting some corporate help in financing my project," he says with a smile.
He contacted Jackson & Perkins of Medford, Ore., one of the nation's premier rose growers. He got to the company's public relations department and "I said we'd appreciate a donation of rose bushes."
He didn't hear from the company for a while, but eventually a Jackson & Perkins public relations person called him and said the company would donate a couple of hundred bushes, which normally sell for $15 apiece. They included hardier Canadian varieties that grow well in this part of the country.
"There couldn't have been a nicer gesture on the part of that company," George says. He eventually accepted 125 plants.
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He says he's had a great deal of help with the gardens from groups as diverse as Mormon church elders and work-release inmates from the Richland County Jail. Those people help George with much of the heavy work. He lost his left arm in a hunting accident when he was 20 and "as I'm getting older, I find it much harder to do the work I did 10 years ago," he says.
He also works closely with Deetta Moeller, the zoo's master gardener.
For George, the attraction of roses is purely sensual.
There's that fragrance, of course. And the flowers are a treat for the eyes as well as the nose.
"The color combinations, the newer roses, the hybrids, have become fascinating," he says.
Readers can reach Forum reporter
Tom Pantera at (701) 241-5541
