Harriett Risley Foote (October 12, 1863 Waterville NY -1951), Rosarian
[From "Botanic Garden News", by the Botanic Garden of Smith College, Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 2005, p. 11-12:"Rediscovering the Rose Woman of America", by Elizabeth Anderson ] ...Her renowned garden in Marblehead, Massachusetts, attracted visitors from around the globe. Cars from all 48 states lined the street, assembling before her gate, and yachts put into Marblehead just to catch a glimpse of the four acre estate, aptly called The Rose Garden. Rose enthusiasts flocked to Marblehead to experience Mrs. Foote’s astonishing array of 2,000 varieties (approximately 10,000 total specimens at the garden’s peak), towering over them in luxurious good health. Mrs. Foote’s roses were so healthy that visitors, dwarfed by abundant blossoms, often found it difficult to recognize varieties they had seen countless times in other more arid gardens. Harriett Foote’s success with roses, better known for the difficulties surrounding their cultivation, was a testament to her lifelong interest in the experimental sciences and her keen faculty for observation. Born Harriett Risley on October 12, 1863, in Waterville, New York, she attended Waterville Academy and entered Smith College in the fall of 1882. At Smith she pursued the well-balanced course load required of students, choosing electives in botany. After her graduation in 1886, she continued her studies in Germany, later returning to the United States to teach chemistry and physics at Holyoke High School. In 1891 she married the Rev. Henry Lewis Foote, rector of Holyoke’s Episcopal Church. Reverend and Mrs. Foote moved to Marblehead in 1895, when Rev. Foote was called to St. Michael’s Church, and it was in the rectory garden at Marblehead that Harriett Foote began growing roses.
At its peak, the rectory garden contained 250 varieties and 650 plants. Mrs. Foote pored over European rose books and catalogues, ordering roses from all over the world in a day when large-scale commercial rose culture and import restrictions did not exist in the United States. In fact, she was one of the first Americans to grow hybrid teas successfully, ordering her plants from a nursery in Scotland. ...In 1906 Rev. Foote’s poor health forced his retirement and the Footes moved to a new home that would soon be named The Rose Garden. Four hundred roses were brought from the rectory garden to establish what would become the largest collection of rose varieties in the United States. Mrs. Foote continued working with her roses after her husband’s death in 1918, expanding The Rose Garden so that it eventually encompassed four acres. She established her first prize fund at Smith, in honor of her husband. The Henry Lewis Foote Memorial Prize is still given by the Religion Department for excellence in biblical studies. Before her death in 1951, Harriett R. Foote ’86 set up another prize fund under her own name, in memory of her parents, for the best student work in botany. ...Nothing is left of her Marblehead garden and only fragmentary evidence marks her other designs.
[From the website of "The Cultural Landscape Foundation":] Born in Waterville, New York, celebrated rosarian and author Harriet Risley received a bachelor’s degree from Smith College in 1886. Attending graduate school in Germany, she returned to the U.S. to teach. In 1891 she married the Reverend Henry Foote and began experimenting with growing roses in the rectory garden in Marblehead, Massachusetts. As word of her work spread, she received commissions to design rose gardens, expanding her practice after her husband’s death in 1918. On her four-acre parcel of land, she cultivated almost 10,000 specimens of roses, known for their height and abundant blooms. As Foote’s reputation grew, her work was featured in a number of garden magazines. Her garden designs include the Henry and Clara Ford estate in Michigan; the Arthur and Harriet Curtiss James' Rhode Island estate; and the Richard and Florence Crane estate, Castle Hill; and the garden of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Webster in Massachusetts. Her rose garden at The Cedars, the summer home of Henry Sargent Hunnewell, won a Massachusetts Horticultural Society Gold Medal in 1923. Foote collaborated with other designers of the time including Arthur Shurtleff and Herbert Kellaway. In 1948 she published Mrs. Foote's Rose Book, describing her cultivation methods in detail.
