Roses Named For Famous People

From Abe Lincoln and Amelia Earhart to William Shakespeare and Zorina many roses have been named for famous people. Before the 1950s, roses named for people mostly honored royalty, relatives of the grower, and a few deceased notables.

In the 1950s and 1960s, American rose growers decided that gardeners would rather have a "celebrity" rose planted in the backyard than one named after a grower's relative. They named waves of roses after Hollywood and TV stars: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Carmen Miranda, Lucille Ball, Eva Gabor, and Ingrid Bergman just to name a few. Most are no longer found at your local garden center, but they may still be blooming away in someone's garden.

Queen Elizabeth, introduced in 1954 to honor her coronation, still sells. The combination of royalty, hyper-celebrity, and tragedy led to a brisk scuffle over naming honors after the death of Princess Diana. Jackson & Perkins emerged as the U.S. winner with Diana, Princess of Wales, a white rose touched with pale pink.

The most recent trend in naming is to invoke a higher power. Thus the Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II. The popular pope's rose is pure white, as was his customary attire. Jackson Perkins also pushed for a Mother Teresa rose, but her representatives declined to have a product, even a rose, named for her.

The Julia Child rose (pictured above) and the Barbra Streisand rose are currently popular and fragrant roses. I recently strolled around one of my favorite local garden centers and happened upon both of these roses, plus the Cary Grant and Rosie O'Donnell varieties. Plant a garden of just roses named after the famous - an interesting conversation starter indeed!