Ooty: John Sullivan, the founder of modern Nilgiris will be remembered by an exclusive rose variety named as ‘Rose Sullivan’ at the Government Rose Garden (GRG) here as part of the on-going bicentenary of modern Nilgiris. This new hybrid variety was planted at GRG on Wednesday by the Collector of the Nilgiris, J. Innocent Divya.
Director of the Nilgiri Documentation Centre, Dharmalingam Venugopal, who made pioneering efforts for the grand celebration of the bicentenary of Modern Nilgiris to pay a fitting tribute to John Sullivan, said, “In 2014, Colin Sullivan, a descendant of John Sullivan, visited Ooty and expressed a desire that a new variety of rose be named after John Sullivan. The Nilgiri Documentation Centre took the initiative to make the wish come true.”
The new rose variety was donated by M.S. Viraraghavan, a leading horticulturist and rose breeder with more than 100 new varieties of roses registered in his name, he noted.
“John Sullivan, who set foot in the Nilgiris in January 1819 as Collector of Coimbatore, when the Nilgiris was part of Coimbatore district, set the tone to develop the Nilgiris in a modern way. He also recreated an ‘English’ space on the hills for visitors to feel at home,” Venugopal noted.
Sullivan set the trend to recreate English cottages and gardens on the hills by introducing a host of English trees and flowering plants including oak, hemp, flax, vetch, lucerne, geranium, laburnum, heliotrope, violet, mignonette and last but not the least, the rose.
“The Rose Sullivan is bound to be a big draw at ]the rose garden. We hope Rose Sullivan will have a separate enclosure with a suitable information plaque for locals and visitors to appreciate the contribution of John Sullivan,” added Venugopal.
