The Handbook on Oleanders

Magnolia Willis Sealy

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No occupation is so delightful to me

as the culture of the earth, and no culture

 comparable to that of the garden.

Thomas Jefferson

Galveston, the Oleander City

More than any city in the United States, Galveston, Texas, has treasured the oleander. In 1841, Joseph Osterman, a prominent businessman of the day and a merchant and ship owner, brought the first plants from Jamaica as gifts for his wife and his sister-in-law Mrs. Isadore Dyer. These first oleanders, a single white, and a double pink later named after Mrs. Dyer, were planted on the grounds of their homes. Mrs. Dyer loved the flowers and propagated many plants, giving them to friends throughout the island.

Plants and cuttings were also brought from the Middle East and Europe by prominent Galveston families. There is a reference to a Dr. Roehmer, visiting from Germany, who was impressed with the roses and oleanders in bloom in 1846. In 1900, a year sadly remembered by Galvestonians, much of the island was destroyed in The Storm, a severe hurricane that brought gulf waters as high as the first story of many of the original homes and public buildings. After the storm, as a precaution for the future, tons of soil and sand were brought in to raise the level of the island covering virtually all remaining plant life. With Magnolia Willis Sealy as its inspirational head, the Women's Health Protective Association was formed to improve health conditions and beautify the city. In the early days in Galveston, especially in the aftermath of the storm, fragrance was of major importance. The Women's group chose the oleander for planting in parks and public gardens and to line the streets

(and roadways, believing it to have healthy properties in addition to the strong scent which would drown out all the noxious odors from ponds, stagnant water and sewage problems. It is reported that the fragrance of the original oleanders was so intense that people would often have to close their windows at night! Oleanders were also recommended for planting around the perimeter of yards and vegetable gardens to serve as windbreaks.

In 1908 the Galveston Tribune commented that together with the beaches the city's oleander plantings were ranked as one of the island's most popular tourist attractions. Since 1910, when the Galveston Daily News reported that Galveston was known throughout the world as "The Oleander City," parades, balls and other festivites

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 have become a tradition honoring this lovely and enduring plant that has contributed so much to the beauty of the island.

Dr. Darrell MacDonald conducted extensive studies on the flora of the island for his PhD dissertation which focused on the transformation of Galveston from a barrier island into an urban complex of exotic plantings mixed with native plants. His research involved 120 gardens located in four sections of the island with 30 in each section so that he would have a statistical set. He censused and mapped each garden in addition to interviewing the owners. Dr. MacDonald came to the  conclusion that the main identifying factor is what he calls the Triad — the oaks, the oleanders and the palms. "That group of plantings, I think, is really an historical trademark of the move from a barrier island to a tropical-like environment which they wanted their city to be," he stated.

Many of the original oleanders introduced into Galveston have undergone several name changes as new names were often given to honor prominent Galveston citizens. Oleander historian Elizabeth Head believes that some of the older varieties match pictures she has seen of European ones. On an oleander list of the 1920's both 'Early Dawn' and 'Peace' are listed, names that she feels are much prettier than people's names. In a 1941 compilation sixty varieties were listed, but by this time plants that had appeared on previous lists had undergone many name changes.

Children grew up among the plants and flowers on the island and whenever we would ask how someone became interested in oleanders there would be a noticeable glint in the eye as the years rolled back and fond memories of childhood returned. Some of the most memorable moments in our interviews would be the recounting of these childhood experiences by oleander aficionados in Galveston. In her interview Elizabeth Head recalled, "I became interested when I was very young because I'm a 'born-on-the-island' person with oleanders all around, . . . and I've always loved them and enjoyed them in my neighborhood. We used to string them and wear them around our necks and for the number of children and oleanders in Galveston, there aren't any reported poisonings." Bob Newding remembers, "I grew up on the island and oleanders have always been a part of our life growing up. They were around the elementary school that I attended, around the junior high school, and we used to make necklaces of the blossoms for our girlfriends when we were kids, 10 or 11 years old — we threaded the flowers and made leis. Galveston, growing up in Galveston, having it called The Oleander City, they've always been planted around, especially the municipal buildings and neighborhoods and along the alleys. Galveston's unique in that it has alleys between the main streets and these are areas that get sunshine but yet they're protected;... as a kid growing up, this was a safe place to play, a kind of grotto or retreat, and some of the most beautiful oleanders in Galveston are planted alongside the alleys. I can remember that as a boy, somewhere from the mid 50's to the early 60's, there have always been various individuals or government agencies that have tried to promote oleanders in Galveston."

Clarence Pleasants devoted his life to all aspects of the oleander, especially research into their history and culture. His observations were detailed and extensive as was his knowledge of cultivars. Professor Octavia Hall says that he could "sense" a particular variety unlike anyone else. Of her work in putting together oleander herbarium specimens Professor Hall wrote (regarding the morphological

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variations constituting varieties): "In these Clarence's exquisite ability to spot subtle variations was peerless. I deferred to his judgment all the way, giving him credit for variety definitions in each of the herbarium sheets." One can only hope that sometime in the not too distant future, the International Oleander Society, or perhaps the Galveston Chamber of Commerce, will secure the necessary funds to reprint the classic book first published in 1966 by Clarence Pleasants entitled, Galveston, The Oleander City. When we interviewed Clarence on tape he gave his permission to quote anything we wished from his writings and experiences, such was his generosity and selflessness. We would like to include a brief selection from his book as an example of his love for Galveston: "... as a gardener I could not fail to be attracted to Galveston through its jewels, the oleanders; but aside from that, I admire and praise this city that has trod the sands of time alone and stands today as a monument to a gallant people. . . . Truly one would have to visit this city of floral beauty to understand why oleanders and Galveston are synonymous."

Where to See Oleanders in Galveston

Moody Gardens

Gazing across Galveston Bay from the Texas coast, visitors are often surprised by the unusual sight of a huge glass pyramid rising from a beach of pure white sand. The Pyramid is, in fact, a ten-story, 40,000 square foot greenhouse enclosing a fully functioning, chemical-free rainforest kept in balance by beneficial bacteria and insects, and several dedicated horticulturists. Paths guide visitors past rocks and waterfalls amid a superb collection of tropical plants, several species of tropical birds and reptiles, and more than 2000 colorful butterflies that glide weightlessly among branches laden with orchids, ferns, plumeria blossoms and flowering tropical vines. It is one of the central features at Moody Gardens, located at One Hope Boulevard on the north shore of the island. The project also offers a conference and convention center, horticultural therapy and hippotherapy programs, entomological and medical research centers, and an environmental library as well as a hotel, restaurants, an IMAX-3D theater, volleyball courts, paddleboats and other activities. Today, with over 20,000 plants — hundreds of which are oleanders — on the 156 acres surrounding The Pyramid and other buildings, the gardens are an oasis of lush green and rainbows of color, and are becoming known as one of the best botanical collections in the southern United States.

John Kriegel, Director of Gardens, was of great assistance in providing a comprehensive overview of the focus of the gardens as related to oleanders. With the aim of establishing a collection worthy of Galveston's reputation as The Oleander City and the home of the International Oleander Society, they began with a group of about 60 varieties amassed and donated by Clarence Pleasants. With these they established an "I.D." garden, or world reference garden, for the purpose of identifying cultivars as well as public enjoyment. It is in this first of many planned "I.D."

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Massed oleander planting with the Moody Gardens Rainforest Pyramid in the background.

Oleanders, pittosporum, periwinkle and palms in an attractive and harmonious planting at Moody Garden.

Massed oleander planting at Moody Gardens.

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gardens, now known as the Clarence Pleasants Oleander Collection, that there rests a plaque dedicated to his memory. It reads:

"Inspirational Founder of the

International Oleander Society,

Author, Teacher, Horticulturist,

and a Southern Gentleman"

Larger quantities of ten or fifteen selected varieties have since been propagated and integrated into mass plantings in the landscape. As Kriegef says, "Basically, utilizing oleanders wherever we can has been our design criteria." Future plans include accession of varieties from other parts of the world as a continuation of Clarence Pleasants' collection and identification work, propagation for landscaping around a new hotel and smaller pyramid that will be a Discovery Museum, propagation of unusual varieties for distribution to the public, and making the oleander collection more informative and educational as well as beautiful.

One of the finest sets of herbarium specimens we have seen is the oleander collection prepared by Professor Octavia Hall. Her work is meticulous and artistic and includes stems, leaves, flowers, follicles and seeds. The collection is kept in a fireproof safe at Moody Gardens. A duplicate set was submitted to and accepted by the Smithsonian Institution.

Open Gates — The George and Magnolia Willis Sealy Conference Center

The Open Gates garden is located on Broadway between 24th and 25th Streets and was dedicated by Eugenia Sealy Cross, George Sealy III and Lane T. Sealy in cooperation with the University of Texas Medical Branch, the Magnolia Willis Sealy Foundation and the International Oleander Society in memory of George Sealy, Jr., 1880-1944. George Sealy, Jr. and his mother Magnolia Willis Sealy are remembered for their lifelong dedication to oleanders in Galveston. Open Gates was the original family home and more than thirty varieties of oleander as well as many other flowering plants may be viewed in the newly landscaped gardens.

Notes and Anecdotes from George and Lane Sealy

The first generation of the family in Galveston were George and Magnolia Willis Sealy. Magnolia was from the little town of Montgomery north of Houston and George had come from Pennsylvania. As George Sealy III related to us:

In 1900 or 1901, after the Galveston storm, grandfather was on his way east to refinance Galveston's public debt and he died on the train going north. Since Magnolia was a widow for the next [approximately] 30 years, she traveled a lot around the world and brought seeds and plants back to Galveston from everywhere. We had lilies from the Nile Valley in the yard and palm trees from all over the place and flowers from any place she could bring seeds. She loved flowers. Grandfather's

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name is with hers on a stone down in the Bolivar Ferry Park which mentions that they were instrumental in putting palm trees all along Broadway so I presume the idea started before granddaddy died. But, nevertheless, she continued it. She was quite active in flowers. On the northwest corner of the old family home on Broadway there's a plaque to the 'Isadore Dyer' [variety], right across the alley from our home. Because she was attributed with starting the first real interest in oleanders on the island, I presume that was where they thought the first oleander was planted. I imagine because it was so close to the house, probably grandmother took great delight in it since it blooms so much and so well and so beautifully in Galveston. She was quite helpful in spreading them, too. But from what I remember and from what I remember daddy telling me, and mother, too, dad [George Sealy, Jr.] was the propagator — that was one of his real serious hobbies. He was trying to find something that would grow in Galveston with the salt breezes and he tried everything. He never quit experimenting with flowers to see if something would do better than oleanders in Galveston but nothing did.

't George Sealy, Jr., like his father and mother, was in many ways very influential in the development of Galveston. He was president of the Galveston Wharf Company that operated big shipping docks and grain elevators. The company also serviced the deep water shipping business at the turn of the century when Galveston was the only deep water port except for New Orleans and New York. Cotton was the big crop then and the company warehoused cotton, sulfur and other materials until they were loaded onto ships. Another of Sealy's business interests was a Cotton Concentration Company which transported raw baled cotton into Galveston by rail and, using huge hydraulic compresses, compacted it into small bales that required less space in the holds of ships. Of these years with his father. Lane recalls:

As his hobby he and Eddy Barr raised oleanders from seeds [from plants he pollinated] and he did grafting also. His "little" oleander operation was on the grounds of a vacant lot of the Cotton Concentration Company yards. It was sort of in a flood plain, marsh land, and subject to backup from the bay. There would be acres after acres of little buckets with little twigs in them and Coca Cola bottles all over the place with twigs in them. His idea was to be able to raise every known variety of oleander on the island and make those available free to the public. He wanted to plant them without charge for the city and did — the city is just profuse with them. He and his mother were both responsible, much to the chagrin of the city that has to maintain them!

I remember as a boy of perhaps seven or eight during the war when we would have blackouts and coastal defense drills, he would go out at night and find a variety of oleander somewhere in town in somebody's yard and he would steal them. Well, I hate to use the word steal. What I mean by stealing is he always had a little shear in the back of his car, pruning shears, and he would go up to an oleander plant that he wanted

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George Sealy

and take a clipping from it. He was so fearful of being caught doing this that he would entice me to.... I guess you really had to know my dad. He was the epitome of honesty and integrity. The very thought of anything off color was just abhorrent to him and he raised us that way. So he'd stay in the car and show me where it was and stay a couple of blocks away and make me go take the oleander clipping. I thought this was great sport — a big old tree there and we just took a little clipping off of it. It turned out later that when I told this story to the Oleander Society everybody whooped because it seems everybody does that. But to me it was in the dark of the night and we were really doing something evil. I was perpetuating this sinister operation of dad's and I felt somewhat guilty about it. I remember when he developed new varieties he named one after my mother and others after very prominent people. Once he said he had a new variety and couldn't think of a name for it and — I remember this so distinctly — I said, "Well, look Daddy, it's the least you can do since I have to do all your undercover work and strategic stealing of these oleander cuttings half of my life, the least you could do is to name one after me." All in jest, I remember that distinctly. "I've been doing your dirty work for you and you just owe me that much of a favor to name one after me." Of course, being a youngster of seven that's the last I heard of it and never thought any more about it.

Then, within the last five years, long after dad and mother died, my brother and sister and I wanted to give some kind of memorial to Galveston that could be used and enjoyed by the whole city in their

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Oleanders at Open Gates , Galveston 

Oleanders at Open Gates, Galveston

memory, so we thought of doing something with oleanders. Well, we didn't know anything about oleanders, so we just thought it would be a good thing to make a park or a memorial of some kind. Then my brother and'sister said, "Let's see if we can't donate a piece of ground and do what dad did, just develop oleanders and give them away, without fanfare or money or anything." Dad would give them to anybody. The only agreement was that they would plant it, take care of it, nurture it along and try to develop more of them. He sent them all over the world. So we wanted to do something like that, create something so that people from all over the world could get an oleander from Oleander City and take it home. Well, we didn't have the foggiest idea where we'd start but my brother George said, "Hey, I saw this guy on television who was called Mr. Oleander and he seemed to know everything there is to know about oleanders. Let's go to Galveston and find out who he is." So we called the station and his name turned out to be Clarence Pleasants. We called him up and he thought we were a couple of screwballs asking a bunch of questions. Of course the name was very familiar to him but to have two people sort of come out of nowhere into his life of oleanders this late in the game, something just didn't smell right to him. Of course, he didn't put it quite like that — he just didn't know if we were legitimate or not. But he answered very genuinely, "Yes, I'd be glad to talk to you about oleanders and a memorial for Mr. Sealy and whatever else you want to do. You came at a most propitious time, it just so happens that our local Oleander Society is having a meeting at Kempner Park today and we would love for you to come." (That very day we were theref) We said, sure, we'd be glad to. We showed up and introduced ourselves to the ladies and were treated royally because we didn't know they existed and they didn't know we existed. We were just sort of something out of the past that popped up and said, hey, we want to try to work with you all on this memorial that we have in mind. And they, of course, perked up right quick and said, "How many ideas do you want?" That's how our relationship with the Oleander Society really got started — a phone call out of the blue.

But how this ties back in to my sleuthing career was that Clarence said, "You're Lane Taylor Sealy, aren't you?" I said, "Yes, but how in the world did you know my whole name?" (I don't use the middle name Taylor.) And he pulled out his list of varieties of oleanders and said, "Look here, there's a 'Lane Taylor Sealy' oleander." I thought, well, I'll be damned, my dad did it. I never knew, from all that time long ago when I said this to dad that he really did do it, and it was an official variety in the books of the oleander world.

Later, when the Sealy family was working with the landscape architect on the new design for the grounds of Open Gates, Lane contacted Julia AUison, then president of the Oleander Society, about acquiring oleanders for the project. In his conversation with her he made this request:

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"... there is one thing that I would like especially to do if you could get permission from somebody — my days of stealing are over now — but if you could get permission from whoever now owns the property of SeaArama to take a clipping off of that 'Lane Taylor Sealy' variety and start one, I would be most grateful." That was the only known 'Lane Taylor Sealy' variety in existence as far as any of them knew. So Clarence outdid himself. He went and dug up the whole bush and put part of it in Kewpie's greenhouse, and then planted one in Open Gates and it was appropriately labeled. A year after that when it was all done we went down and dedicated it, had a beautiful little ceremony in the garden there. I gave the address on behalf of the family and when I finished they said they would like to give me a gift. They gave me the most beautiful plant of 'Lane Taylor Sealy' that Clarence had raised in Kewpie's greenhouse from a clipping he had taken maybe a day or so after we first met. It had grown to maybe eighteen inches high in a pot and it was so

Open Gates, Galveston

beautiful. I was thrilled to death, holding back the tears, I was so touched with it. Well, I said I can't take this to San Antonio, every time I try to plant one I kill it with kindness. I just don't have a green thumb — we stuck these things in Coke bottles like I thought my dad did and his grew and mine didn't. So I asked them to keep it there in Kewpie's greenhouse and they said they would. As far as I know it's still going in the hothouse and they're making more little Lane Taylor Sealy's from it!

Beauty is God's handwriting.

Welcome it in every fair face,

every fair sky, every fair flower.

Charles Kingsley

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