New to posting on this forum, but sorry if I am in the wrong place. This is a comment about a breeder, and Kriek bred both roses and peonies. Does he have two separate entries? Did I naively assume that each breeder would only be mentioned once?
Well yes, and thank you. This site covers much more than roses, and as someone interested in garden history, the profiles of breeders are especially interesting. I would have preferred to have put my remarks in as 'breeder information', but couldn't see how to do that - maybe my status is too lowly!!
The Peony variety ‘Felix Supreme’ first appeared in 1955 the catalogue of the Cottage Gardens Nursery in Lansing, Michigan. The nursery was owned by Nicolaas Isaac Willem Kriek, who was born in 1895. However it is unlikely that he actually created this peony, even though it is registered to his name. This is because in 1928 a man from Boskoop, The Netherlands, joined his company. Born in 1877, Abraham Nieuwenhuyzen was already an important breeder of peonies in Holland, before coming to America in 1921, where he changed his name to Newhouse. Abraham had won several important medals and prizes for a red peony called ‘Dr H. van der Tak’, back in Holland. In fact, he also won a prize at the America National Peony Show in 1923 for the ‘finest crimson’ with another of his plants, ‘Mr. L. Van Leeuwen’. his introduction, He started working for Kriek in 1928, and died in Lansing in 1957. He has peonies registered at the American Peony Society under both 'Nieuwenhuyzen' and 'Newhouse'. As for Kriek, he began his life in America as a representative for a Dutch bulb company, and in 1923 started Cottage Gardens Nursery. In 1930 he designed and built a garden in Lansing for Richard H. Scott, President of Reo Motor Car Company. Scott had sold him the land for the nursery. The garden is still in existence, and considered a high-point in that period of American garden design. The nursery still exists today, and is still in the Kriek family. Although the family claim Kriek introduced the 'Spartan' juniper in the 1950s, that seems unlikely, as the name 'Spartan' seems to have been given to this plant when introduced in 1961 by Monrovia Nurseries, who re-named a plant called 'Helle' they re-obtained from Denmark, where they had a sent a seedling of Juniperus chinensis around 1950.
