THE BONNEWITZ GARDENS, VAN WERT, OHIO 
How Peonies Came to Van Wert 
Forty or more years ago, Mrs. Sarah A. Pleas, a widow living in Spiceland, 
Indiana noticed some tiny plants growing under her peonies. Wondering what 
they might be, she carefully transplanted them to a new location where they 
would get plenty of sun, and where they could be regularly watered. In a few 
years she was rewarded by finding herself the owner of a great number of new 
peony plants. When they were all in bloom she was surprised to find that no 
two of the young plants had flowers alike, and was still more surprised to find 
that everyone of them differed, in both form and coloring from the mother 
plants. Such plants grown directly from seed as these were, are known in the 
peony world, as seedlings. 
Mrs. Pleas preserved the plants whose flowers were the most outstanding in 
beauty, and she eventually divided the roots of each plant, and each individual 
piece of any root is, in the peony world, called a peony division, and all the 
divisions of any plant when old and strong enough to bloom, will carry exactly 
the same kind of flowers as the original seedling. To some of us it seems quite 
remarkable that for all time to come, even for hundreds of years, all divisions 
made from divisions of that original seedling, will continue to carry exactly 
the same flowers as the original one. 
Mrs. Pleas gathered and planted peony seed every year, to grow more 
seedlings, to be divided into divisions, which she sold to visitors in her garden. 
We are told she had just two prices for them; for the ones whose flowers she 
thought most beautiful, she charged $1.50 each or $15.00 for a dozen. All the 
other plants she sold at $1.00 each or $10.00 per dozen. 
The original peony lover in Van Wert, Miss Clara Anderson in some manner 
heard of Mrs. Pleas’ garden, and eventually divisions from it, for herself and 
one other Van Wert flower lover were secured. 
When these divisions were three years old I was called in to see them, and 
one individual plant named jubilee, (because it had first bloomed on the 
fiftieth anniversary of the day on which Mrs. Pleas had been married), was 
most artistically supported by a rustic framework. This plant whose beauty 
was enhanced by its artistic support was carrying several larger and more 
beautiful flowers than my mind had ever even conceived that nature could 
produce. These flowers gave me one of the four great thrills of my entire life. 
While I stood entranced with their beauty, every hair on my head seemed to 
stand erect as if in astonishment, and cold chills went up and down my spine, 
just exactly as they had done on a former occasion, when for the first time I, 
without notice, came face to face with Michel Angelo’s “Moses,” in the church, 
San Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome. 
I instantly offered ten dollars for the plant, but neither of the Van Wert 
growers would sell, but Miss Anderson informed me that even though Mrs. 
Pleas had removed to Southern California, where peonies cannot be success¬ 
fully grown, yet for $5.00 she could secure a jubilee division from Mrs. Pleas’ 
daughter, who had remained in Indiana. 
I was delighted to get this opportunity to purchase a jubilee, but when the 
division arrived, we found that although it was of large size with five beautiful 
eyes (buds or sprouts), yet it had been so unskillfully cut, that one of the 
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