George Bugnet is best known for rose breeding. The popular cultivar ‘Thérèse Bugnet’, named after his sister, is still widely available today. George Bugnet (1879—1981)


Born in Burgundy, France, George Bugnet, became a


student of literature at the Université du Dijon and the Sorbonne. He worked as a journalist before immigrating to Canada in 1905 at the age of 25, with his wife, Julia. Bugnet began working in Saint-Boniface, Man. and the couple’s first son, Charles, was born there before the family moved to Alberta later that year. Bugnet and his family settled near Lac Majeau (now Rich Valley), 50 miles north of Edmonton, and had 10 children. He became involved in the local educational system, serving as the secretary of Rich Valley school district for 30 years and later as a school trustee at Lac Ste. Anne for 13 years. Missing the vegetation of their native France, they first


landscaped with plants from experimental farms and east- ern nurseries. A self-taught botanist, Bugnet was at first most interested in finding trees and shrubs that could survive the harsh Canadian winters. By 1912, he was studying horticulture and writing to botanical gardens worldwide requesting seeds of plants that would grow in northern Alberta. At the same time, he was cataloguing the local flora and still writing poetry, plays and novels. His writing strove to


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capture the essence of the majesty of nature and the fragil- ity of mankind. Bugnet had a mystical relationship with the land and environment that transposed on the page into works of art. He is best known for his novel, La Forêt (1935), The Forest was translated in 1976. Bugnet is most famous for his hybrid development, most


notably with roses. He spent 25 years breeding roses and his 1950 introduction, 'Thérèse Bugnet', named after his sister, is still available in greenhouses today. This hybrid was unusual for its time as it combined three rose species. Bugnet has impacted the landscape of the prairies with several plant


introductions that included: Rita Bugnet


rose, Marie Bugnet rose, Ladoga pine, George Bugnet sweetberry honeysuckle and Julia Bugnet sweetberry honeysuckle, Paul Bugnet apple, Claude Bugnet plum, and the Bugnet strain of Scots pine from Finland. In 1978, the University of Alberta bestowed on him an honourary doctorate. Bugnet enjoyed a long life, living until the ripe age of 102. In honour of his contribution to the develop- ment of local plant species, the Alberta government named a forest reserve after him, the Bugnet Plantation Histori- cal Site. And, fittingly, a rose was also named after this pioneer of horticulture.


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