When I buy a rose, I consider several things: color, growth habit, location requirements. These are all important aspects to ponder to ensure a thriving plant and a visually appealing garden. But something else I consider, which has nothing to do with gardening success, is the name. I love rose names. They can be serious (‘Hope for Humanity') or silly (‘Yabba Dabba Doo'). They can evoke grand emotions (‘Falling in Love') or the desire for a cocktail (‘Tequila Supreme'). They can memorialize a famous person (‘Frida Kahlo') or a famous place (‘Disneyland'). The depth and breadth of rose names make giving a rose as a gift uniquely suitable. For a friend's 60th birthday, I gave her ‘Golden Celebration.' When my girlfriend gave birth to twins, her sister gave her ‘Double Delight.' Before I moved to Northern California, my sister's going away gift to me was ‘Burst of Joy.' In the same way, a rose can be a perfect way to memorialize an event. When Queen Elizabeth II died, my husband reported the news to me and then went directly to his computer and ordered ‘Queen Elizabeth.' I never fail to think of these memories when tending to my roses; it makes gardening chores more like meditation.
Not every rose in my garden has a meaningful name to me. I bought ‘Sunbelt South Africa' because it was a patio rose, I liked the apricot color, and that's what the garden center had available. It was a similar situation with ‘Westerland' and ‘Eleganza Sunny Sky.' All lovely roses, but the names don't resonate with me, which is probably why I continually forget what they are called. However, there are two roses on my wish list whose names I know I would never forget were I to add them to my garden. One is ‘Ketchup & Mustard,' a stunning red and yellow bloomer with a name I find hilarious in its unpretentiousness. The second is ‘Bloom of Ruth,' a rose I saw at the Chelsea Flower Show in London years ago and have coveted ever since, but I've not been able to find it in the United States. Ruth was my mother's name, and I would love to be able to remember her as I tended to her rose.