A century-old rose bush was cut during a nighttime heist in Germantown. Two years later, it has rebounded.

Last spring, when the famous tausendschön rose bloomed with only a handful of delicate pink flowers, Kim Staub was not surprised. After all, Staub, executive director of the Wyck Historic House and Garden on Germantown Avenue, the idyllic home of the rambling rose bush planted over a century ago, knew she was dealing with a gravely wounded flower.

It had only been the summer before, when a poacher climbed into the museum’s enclosed garden and, wielding dull pruner’s, clipped off nearly all of the living plant material from the tausendschön —some four feet worth.

Celebrated for its beauty, the tausendschön fans out dramatically over the colonial house’s entrance and is a draw for the historical house and public gardens. But when the plant poacher made off in the night with its shoots, the tausendschön’s caretakers knew that their prize could take several years to recover.

Now, it’s back.

In May, when the tausendschön revealed countless clusters of tiny pink flowers, Staub truly understood the meaning of its name: a thousand beauties. Taking on a second life, the climbing rose exploded with new blooms.

“It was the first time we saw all these clusters, all these really little beautiful bunches of pink blossoms,” Staub said.

In fact, its ruffled flowers grew so strong that horticulturists at the Wyck now hope it will bloom again later this summer, something it did not do last year, so soon after its mangling.

“It was saving its energy,” Staub said. “But this year, it’s come back to its previous glory.”

First planted at Wyck in the 1910s by Jane Bowne Haines. A descendant of the Wistar-Haines family, which maintained the house for nine generations, Bowne Haines was a Quaker educational reformer who founded the Pennsylvania Horticultural School for Women.

The oldest rose garden in America in its original plan, some of the plants at the Wyck have remained in their original relocations since 1821. Though not the oldest, the dramatic tausendschön is the most known.

Staff suspected someone clumsily clipped at the bush in 2023 to either grow roses at their home or sell them on online flower markets. It was the first time anyone at the urban garden and community farm could remember someone stealing their plant life. No one was ever arrested.

Gardeners at the Wyck slowly nursed the plant back to health, carefully monitoring for mold and laying down extra fertilizer. The wounded rose bush did not recover without its admirers, even drawing new members and supporters to the Wyck, Staub said,

“Two years later, we still get, ‘Which is the rose that was vandalized? Which was the one that was torn to shreds,’” Staub said. “So they are always really surprised to see it’s doing so well.”

The plant’s revival comes as the National Historic Landmark undertakes a long-planned exterior restoration. As part of the project, gardeners will delicately unwind the tausendschön from its trellis and pull them away from the repairs, before retying them.

Despite the positive plant prognosis, it could take over five years before the tausendschön regrows to its former size, said Jackson Warren, manager of living collections at Wyck. That’s how much woody growth was stolen, he said.

The tausendschön has time on its side.

“There’s just been this longevity at Wyck,” Staub said. “The plants are part of that history, too. The plants want to be here and continue to be here, and they are adding to that legacy over and over again.”