Brother Stefan's Clematis

We don't usually think of Poland as a center for ornamental plant breeding, nor do we connect religious life with hybridizing the most beautiful flowers in the world. Yet the work of one humble monk has come to the attention of the global horticultural community.

Brother Stefan Franczak, 81, carries on the ancient monastic gardening traditions. He was born on a farm in Poland in 1917, educated at an agricultural college and graduated at the close of World War II. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1948 as a brother at the Jesuit College in Warsaw, where he was given charge of its vegetable and fruit garden.

The garden had been badly damaged during the war and the Jesuits had planned to build a new church on that site. They were restrained from building by a government that had no problem with the creation of public gardens. Stefan was charged with transforming the site from food production into a beautiful public space.

Stefan used his connections to other monastic communities to obtain plants, catalogs and literature on various species from around the world. His greatest interests lay in flowering clematis vines as a beautiful plant for cloaking old stone fences and stumps on the site. Stefan began by collecting a large number of clematis native to Poland, then obtained more from France, Britain and the United States.

He began propagating quantities of them to sell to raise money to buy still more new plants. Eventually he turned to breeding, and crossed the Polish clematis with his imported hybrids.

Stefan's methods were quite like those of another monk, Gregor Mendel, both of whom grew large numbers of seedlings and systematically selected those with certain qualities. Stephan's primary goal was to find larger flowers with new colors and more dramatic stamens that contrasted with the sepals. A seedling with potential was planted around the garden in different exposures to gauge its vigor and adaptability. Many of his plants were observed in the garden for 10 years or more before Stefan deemed it a suitable variety.

Although Stefan has been breeding new plants for decades, the Communist regime made it difficult to introduce them to the rest of Europe. But eventually, he was free to spread his accumulation of new plants throughout the world. Stefan's first new clematis was presented at the 1982 Chelsea Flower Show in London, a variety he named to honor the Holy Father, "Jan Pawel II." He would go on to introduce 24 new varieties of clematis, with another 20 waiting to be released.

He insists on naming all his clematis after famous people of Poland who deserve to be so honored. Perhaps his most famous clematis is "Kardynal Wyszynski," named for Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, head of the Catholic Church in Poland for 30 years under the brutal Communists. Another celebrated variety is "Warszawska Nike," which was named after a monument to the heroes of Warsaw during the war.

Stefan's new clematis has won approval of the horticultural elite. Plants are widely available in the United States and in Poland via the nursery of Szczepan Marczynski near Warsaw. Today, Stefan continues to work long days in his garden. He belongs to many worldwide horticultural organizations that have helped to bring these outstanding new contributions to our attention. But most of all, Stefan points out once again, that the natural connection between the spiritual life and that of the garden is a most rewarding path to happiness.

(Maureen Gilmer is a horticulturist and author of Water Works and 13 other books. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)