Brand Peony Farm and the Faribault Peony Show

This article is from the 2016 edition of the RCHS Summer Newsletter. RCHS is working to share more of our content digitally. In 2016, RCHS celebrated our 90th birthday. 2026 is our centennial. Learn more about our centennial celebrations here.

Ninety years ago when the Rice County Historical Society was founded, the county and nation were in the middle of an era of prosperity that was unparalleled in American history.  Little did anyone realize that within another decade, the nation would be in the middle of the worse economic depression of its history.

In Nov. 10, 1926, though, when the historical society adopted its by-laws and incorporated, local businesses were booming – and as a result, most families were doing well. Perhaps the best symbol of that prosperity in Rice County is the Peony Festival in Faribault pioneered by the Brand Peony Farm.

According to a May 24, 1927 article in the Faribault Daily News, “The peony festival will be held on the order of the rose festivals in Portland, Oregon and Pasadena, California. The Brand Peony Farm offered to donate enough peonies to decorate trucks and floats which will be used in the peony parade.”

Pictures from that first Peony Festival parade shows floats, cars, and trucks decorated with peonies. Downtown store windows and streets were also decorated fresh peonies. The parade route used Central Avenue and turned on Fourth Street, went north to Second Street and ended in Central Park.

Besides the parade, the festival included crowning of royalty, a costume dance with 17-piece orchestra, and many other festivities.  At the focus of the festival, however, was the Northwest Peony Show held in Faribault’s Armory.

Before 1927, the Northwest Peony Show had never been held outside the Twin Cities area, and at the time, was considered the biggest peony show in the nation. So it was an honor, not just to officials of the Brand Peony Farm who lobbied for the show to be held in Faribault, but the larger community as well, to be selected to host such a well-known flower show.

Brand History

The Brand Nursery Company was founded in 1868 by Oliver F. Brand, who came at the age of 23, from Fond du Lac, Wis., to Richland, Minn., a small village 14 miles east of Faribault (no longer in existence today).  He started with a small planting of nursery stock consisting of apple grafts and peonies, according to a history of the nursery on file at the RCHS Museum. His nursery is considered one of the first in the state of Minnesota.

Just a year later he moved his nursery to Faribault, however, realizing it was not practical to establish a nursery so far from a railroad on which nursery stock could be shipped to customers. His growing interest in hybridizing new species of peonies led him to build up a collection of different peonies in 1894, from which he could work to create new types.

The peony farm was located on 50 acres on Faribault’s east side between Division Street East and where today the entrance to River Bend Nature Center is.

Oliver’s son, Archie, entered the business with him in 1899, and father and son worked together until 1911 when Oliver Brand died.

Archie entered his first peony show in 1913, a show at the University Farm in St. Paul. The varieties he entered were “Willard,” “Gowdy,” “Brand,” “Longfellow,” “Nightingale” and “Bullock.” That fall orders for Brand Farm peonies increased, and Archie Brand realized that exhibiting at peony shows proved to be a great marketing tool.

By 1918, Brand Peony Farm had developed a large retail business and its products were shipped all over the world. Visitors came to Faribault and the farm in June when the peonies were in bloom, to view the lovely sight of so many flowers in bloom and to smell their heavenly scent.

In 1923, the American Peony Society’s national show was held in St. Paul. Archie Brand exhibited 23 new varieties. He won both the gold and silver metals of the society with his flowers. The Brand Peony Farm’s reputation grew because of that show, which is why Faribault was selected for the site of the Northwest Peony Show in 1927.

Peony Festival Nostalgia

In a collection of postcard photographs from the first Peony Festival in 1927, meant to advertise for the upcoming 1928 festival, is a picture of the five young women who were the festival’s royalty.  They are dressed in ‘20s-style white dresses. They hold bouquets of peonies. They are the epitome of modern 1920s women.

The snapshots show floats beautifully decorated with flower blooms in the style of the Rose Bowl Parade of today. It is easy to think, “What if the Peony Festival and parade had carried on?” Faribault would have great notoriety of hosting an annual parade focused on a lovely, fragrant late spring flower. But the Peony Festival and parade only lasted three years due to economic constraints after the stock market crash in October 1929.

The last parade was in 1929, according to the late Robert Tischler, who worked for Archie Brand. He and his brother, Archie Tischler, took over ownership of the business in 1956. He became sole owner in 1965. While he retired in 1976 and sold the nursery stock, by the early 1980s, he came out of retirement and cultivated new peony varieties again and sold them through a catalog as Tischler’s Gardens.

Robert Tischler, as a boy, worked on floats for the peony parade, which is how he got interested in joining the Brand Peony Farm staff, he said in a 1998 interview with a Faribault Daily News reporter.

The cost associated with organizing the peony parade and festival could not be sustained by the Brand Peony Farm and Faribault community, however, once the Great Depression began to descend on Rice County and the nation.

According to one write up, the 1929 parade was three miles long with floats of all kinds, automobiles, trucks, and horse-drawn vehicles – all profusely decorated with peonies. The Brand Farm alone provided 80,000 blooms, and other sources of the blooms were found as well. Bands came from Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as local bands and the Shattuck Military School.

Peony Show at State Bank

While the economy’s decline after the stock market crash in October 1929 ended the Peony parade and festival, Brand Peony Farms kept staging a local June Peony Show. The 1930 show received a boost from the State Bank of Faribault, which agreed to host the show.

That June, the State Bank of Faribault opened a new bank building at the corner of Central Avenue and Third Street. The Brand Peony Show was held in the lobby of  the newly opened bank. Hundreds attended the show and viewed the Brand Peony Farm fields of peonies in bloom that June in 1930. In following years, the show and the Brand Peony Farm fields in bloom, drew large number of visitors to Faribault.

However, for those who viewed the parades of the late 1920s and partook of the festivals costume dances and other activities, it is likely that the discontinuance of the festival must have been a great disappointment.

The Rice County Historical Society, however, conceived just prior to the first peony festival, is a strong organization today. The museum has files on the Brand Peony Farm and documents on the peony festival. It is still focused on “Preserving the Past, for Future Generations.”

–Pauline Schreiber, RCHS volunteer and board member