Somewhere in the vicinity of the Rose Garden, which features over 600 varieties of roses, is the former site of the Lorillard family's "Acre of Roses", whose petals they used to scent the snuff that they ground in their mill.
Day 523
Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden
June 5th, 2013
Actually, the Lorillard acre of roses was located where the nursery at the Horticultural Operations Center is now located, and the Lorillard family made one feeble attempt at growing roses for use in flavoring snuff. As it turns out, the petals were not ground with the snuff, but rater were rendered through a steam-distillation process into an essential oil called Atter-of-Rose, or Otto-of-Rose. It takes approximately 10,000 rose heads to make each ounce of Atter of rose, and in 1868 the Lorillards used 2,000 ounces. Obviously they were not growing the roses for that scale of production, nor did they have the expertise to render the oils themselves. They purchased the product from the region around Smyrna, Turkey — and used their roses as cut-flowers for the house.