Peter Lambert

Peter Lambert (1 June 1859 – 28 February 1939) was a German rose breeder from Trier.

Life Peter Lambert was born on 1 June 1859 in Trier, Kingdom of Prussia. He acquired a knowledge of roses working with his father Nicholas Lambert in the Lambert & Reiter nursery, later Lambert & Söhne (Lambert & Sons). The brothers Johann and Nicholas had started the firm in 1869 with Jean Reiter, a nurseryman. Peter trained at a Prussian school of horticulture and gained experience working in nurseries in France and England. In 1891 he started his own nursery, eventually employing more than seventy workers.

In 1900 he married Léonie Lamesch, daughter of the Luxembourg rose breeder. To her he had dedicated one of his dwarf Polyanthas crossing Polyanthas with Noisettes. He maintained good contacts with Luxembourg nurseries (Soupert & Notting, Gemen-Bourg, and Ketten Frères), who distributed his varieties.

Peter Lambert helped establish the Europa-Rosarium at Sangerhausen in 1904 and the rosarium in Zweibrücken in 1914. He was also a founder of the Verein Deutscher Rosenfreunde (German Rose Society). He became its director and edited its Rosen-Zeitung 1890–1911.

Lambert and his firm survived World War I but

the defeat and humiliation of World War I weighed heavily on him … and he found the 1920s a difficult time to earn a living. His natural curiosity faded, and he failed to keep pace with the innovations of younger rose breeders … he stuck increasingly to his own breeding lines and seldom took in new genes from other breeders' breakthroughs.

Not surprisingly his production of new varieties declined in the 1930s, his own seventies. But the very late 'Mozart' and 'Martha Lambert' are striking and original.

Sortable list of Peter Lambert roses