Nancy Steen

Nancy Steen by Ann Chapman

1898 – 1986
"Take a stroll at midnight to catch fragrances and new lights on old faces.”

Nancy Steen is remembered in New Zealand as the doyenne of the NZ Heritage Roses’ movement. After the war at the age of 28, she trained to become a Karitane nurse, marrying David Steen on completion of his M.Com.

While still pursuing her own career as a nurse of sick babies, she studied art and developed a special interest in floral drawing. A major artistic achievement was a pictorial alphabet based on New Zealand flora for use in teaching. She continued to use plants to design linocuts and bookplates and in 1936 was invited to become a working member of the Auckland Society of Arts, an honour not lightly bestowed.
She had a unique combination of talents, a deep botanical knowledge and the artist’s eye. Her expertise showed in the balance between colour and form.

Old roses became Nancy’s passion, but she was a total gardener seeing roses as part of the whole picture. She dug up all her borders every three years to attend to every facet of cultivation – root pruning, shaping and re-nourishing the soil, the companion plants and the maintenance.
She used hops as manure and her daughter recounts the story of truckloads of warm, beery, fresh hops, being delivered to the garden ensuring the garden smelt like a brewery. Nancy and her children would sweep a nearby oak lined avenue simply to collect their leaves to benefit her compost.

She travelled with her husband on his business trips discovering old roses in hedgerows and cemeteries.

She wrote and designed The Charm of Old Roses in 1966 when she was 69 and we use her book in preference to many newer ones. It was a hugely successful, and Nancy then found herself on the speaking circuit.

Her descriptions of finding roses and the places where they were found make fascinating reading of a pioneer country as she writes of roses in an historical and geographical context. She was honoured with life membership of the National Rose Society and was recognised by the Dominion Council of the Royal Horticulture as Associate of Honour for her contribution to horticulture. She was asked by the NZ Historic Places Trust to assist with the revised planting of the garden at Kemp House one of NZ’s oldest and most historic houses.

Nancy was a great supporter of the fledgling heritage Roses NZ and was made an honorary member. Apart from her book, Nancy’s other enduring legacy to New Zealand is the Nancy Steen Garden in Auckland which was planted by Heritage Roses and the Auckland City Council.
The garden was named in honour of Nancy’s contribution to heritage roses and opened by the Lady Beattie, the wife of the Governor General in 1984, two years before Nancy died.