When a rose is named after a living person, is that person consulted? Does it require permission?

That's an interesting question, and I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure that it legally requires permission, but courtesy demands that permission be asked if nothing else. Mother Theresa's representatives refused categorically to have a rose named for her.

When Jackson & Perkins named their roses for the first ladies, the first ladies worked with them during the process. They were given a choice of new roses and they chose the one they liked the most. They were also asked to name a favorite charity so that J&P could donate 10% of the sales receipts from that rose to the charity.

A couple of first ladies apparently refused the honor. Jacqueline Kennedy and Hillary Clinton are conspicuously absent from the list, so I suppose they're the ones.

I wonder if Michele Obama will have a rose named in her honor now that J&P is essentially defunct.

Thanks, Zuzu, that's a neat system.

I think the system has evolved. A century ago, perhaps, it was simply presumed to be an honor to have a rose take on the name of a person. I understand, however, that when Sam McGredy told Picasso he was naming one of his handpainted roses after the famous artist, the artist wanted a big sum of money. And it caused a stir, I think among "civilized" society. Suddenly fame had become a fungible asset. And a consequence of that would be that people would seek to become famous simply for the gain to be had in being famous: fame would no longer be so closely linked to special accomplishments. There are those of us who see, Andy Warhol as being the perfect embodiment of this phenomenon (with apologies to art cognoscenti who know better), Warhol, himself understood this with his "fifteen minutes of fame" quip.

So ... what do you suppose became of Rosalyn Carter and Patricia Nixon? Bess Truman? Maimie Eisenhower? Lady Bird Johnson? Eleanor Roosevelt?

The only one of those I have in my garden is Lady Bird, and it's a truly stunning rose. The rose bush, however, is weak and scraggly and I fear for its longevity. The more recent first lady roses -- Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, and Nancy Reagan -- are more vigorous and might stay around longer than the earlier ones.

So, did Sam McGredy have to pay Picasso? If so, I wish he hadn't. I have a couple of Picasso bushes in my garden and I would have been just as eager to buy them under any other name.

Sometimes these marketing tactics backfire. I still haven't bought Barbra Streisand, although it is a beautiful rose, and I avoided buying Rosie O'Donnell for a long time, until I learned that it was also named New Era and I could happily have it growing in my garden with that name.

I can't stand Streisand personally - I can't see how she can be classified as either a singer or an actress (especially with only 1 real movie under her belt.. heck, even Paris Hilton has more movies than that!) - but the rose itself is just gorgeous. LeeAnn Rimes is another rose I'd love to have, but I don't particularly care for the lady herself.

I wanted to get Laura Bush, not because I liked the lady, but because it's a beautiful rusty orange rose. But every time I see it at the nursery, it doesn't look all that good. Nancy Reagan is a beautiful rose & matches Ronald Reagan very nicely.

Hillary First Lady - http://www.helpmefind.com/rose...
Rosalynn Carter - http://www.helpmefind.com/rose... - Cliff sells it as 'Prins Claus'
President Eisenhower has one, but not his wife - http://www.helpmefind.com/gard...
Looks like nothing for Truman
There is a Pat Nixon rose - http://www.helpmefind.com/gard... - and here's an article mentioning it. http://tech.mit.edu/V113/N29/n...

Found this really neat article about rose names http://www.rosegardeningguru.c...

*gasp* Toni!!! I'm shocked! Her singing is incredible. <shudder>

I've never been impressed with her movies so I agree with you on that part.

Alan

Alan - Maybe wrong generation? I'm a Child of the 80s and her voice is too nasally for me. Just me.

Thanks for the link to the naming article - very informative.

Thanks for the link to the article, Toni. It's a good article.

I'd love to know the story behind "Hillary." Why would she refuse to let J&P name a rose for her and then allow a French hybridizer to do it? Maybe she doesn't even know about the French rose.

I really can't stand Barbra Streisand, but I'm in the uncomfortable position of having to defend her as a singer and actress. Are you being serious, Toni, or were you just kidding? I personally think she's one of the great voices of the 20th century, and whether you like the tone of her voice or not, her title as "singer" can't be disputed.

As for the acting thing, I'm wondering which of her 20 or so movies you're calling the "real" one. It's true she started out on Broadway and therefore starred only in musicals for a while, but she moved on to do some great comedies and dramas too. I can name five of her musicals right off the bat: 'Funny Girl,' 'Funny Lady,' 'On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,' 'Yentl,' and 'Hello Dolly.' Her comedies, all of which I enjoyed, include 'What's Up, Doc?' That was a huge movie when it came out, and she was hilariously funny in it. She made some major dramatic films too: 'The Way We Were' and 'A Star Is Born' come to mind right away.

I dislike her as a person, but I'll explain why in the next post because this one's getting too long.

I've met her twice. The first time was in 1963. She was singing at a club in San Francisco and we all went to see her because we had heard about this fabulous unknown singer. Her voice was fabulous, but when we spent some time with her later, she acted like an arrogant spoiled brat. I ran into her again in New York in 1967. By that time she was famous and even more arrogant.

This often spills over into her work and has given her a bad reputation among people in her profession. When she directed 'The Prince of Tides,' for example, the budget ran so far over that the story line about the main character, the actual guy that was called the Prince of Tides, had to be left out. The role of the psychiatrist, on the other hand, was built up. The psychiatrist was supposed to be such a drop-dead gorgeous woman that the guy fell madly in love with her at first sight. She cast herself in that role, of course. One of the budget problems was created when she demanded that the walls of the psychiatrist's office be painted and repainted several times until they matched the green silk blouse she was wearing in that scene. Some people might call this an admirable example of attention to detail, but it just sounds self-indulgent to me.

There was a story about her on the Internet the other day, saying she was demanding that the fish in her pond have to match the three colors of her barn. I'd dismiss it as Internet fluff if I didn't know the story about the walls having to match the blouse. I suppose she can be as demanding as she wants on her own property, but she was working with other people's money when she directed and starred in that movie.

Ah, and here we go with the generation gap. Never heard of some of those movies and since I was forced to watch Yentl when I was a kid, I developed a strong distaste for her immediately. Only song I can really think of hers is (I think she sings) something along the lines of "You never bring me flowers any more".. don't know the name of the song. You don't need to be uncomfortable.. everyone has their likes & dislikes. I personally dislike her, but then again, I dislike almost everything. LOL! I'm pathetic that way!! But I don't dislike her rose!

And maybe Hillary doesn't like J&P? Maybe they didn't offer? Maybe the one that they offered her she didn't like? Maybe they caught her on a crabby day? Who knows. :)

update: I just emailed her through "Friends of Hillary" to find out if J&P did offer her a rose and, if she declined or if they didn't offer her and why was a French hybridizer the one to create her rose?

I hope you get an answer. I'm really curious about that.

Thanks for the research, Toni. How very fun!

Wouldn't it be great to know why Hillary didn't let J&P name a rose in her honor? I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with the fact the J&P was, for a long time, owned by a large tobacco company - Philip Morris - I believe. And the huge tobacco suits were going to trial as her husband was President.

I'm afraid I just never got Streisand's singing. She has a strong voice. But I guess I never found it pleasing. From what I remember of the bits of her work I've actually seen or heard, there's something of the control freak that somehow colors her expressions and it makes me uneasy, I suspect. I'm hoping that the tenacious and vigor of the rose's namesake somehow make it do well in my garden without detracting from its beauty.

Somehow I was thinking it might be more appropriate for the flower petals of Pat Nixon to be blush.

Red does seem to be the wrong color for Pat Nixon, doesn't it?

That's a very good theory about Hillary and J&P. I had no idea they were owned by a tobacco company. Now that J&P has gone down the drain, I wish they still were owned by that company. Or at any rate, I wish whatever happened to J&P in the last few years hadn't happened.

The last I heard, J&P had turned over all of its remaining stock to Weeks, but now I'm hearing that Weeks is also bankrupt.

Here's a newsfeed from October about Iseli & Weeks.

http://www.greenhousegrower.co...

Chapter 11 isn't bad, it's just a reorganization, not a liquidation. Looks like Weeks & Iseli are owned by International Garden Products & that took a tumble, which resulted in J & P to go belly up too. But it doesn't mention how J&P was attached to IGP. Huh.

I don't remember Pat Nixon.. I wasn't even born when her husband was in office (well, technically, I think I *was* around, but not quite hatched yet), so I don't know if red suits her or not. If you say it doesn't, then that sounds good too.

Steve - Babs has survived 2 winters with me. Granted, she's in a more protected area that doesn't get the horrific winds that the east side of my house gets, but she's survived & put out blooms, even with my ineptitude as far as watering/feeding. So, if she survives for me, she should survive for anyone. Her area is actually about a foot thick of a topsoil/pea gravel/breeze mix (who ever did the landscaping just put stuff on top of other stuff rather than scrape it off.. so if you go about 10" down, you'll hit red breeze, then about 2" of soil, then about 4" of pea gravel, then the rest is top soil again). I figured that the rock mixture would actually help with drainage, so I just amended it a little with MiracleGro Tree & Shrub soil rather than rip it all out and replace it all with that. Seems to work for everyone except Enchanted Evening.. that one didn't do well at all this year & I'll be surprised if she survives the winter. If she does, I'm moving her & Oklahoma to a more sunnier spot.. where they're at now is just too dark I think.

Toni - in my garden Babs will be a year old in April. When dry, hot weather hit in June her canes dried out and she became an itsy bitsy shadow of her former self - despite daily watering. Then in late September we had rain. And high temps dropped into the seventies. She put out all sorts of purple foliage and has looked very happy ever since, despite nighttime temps close to 20F. So I'm hoping there is some very effective root development going on. Maybe next year we'll get some top growth, & maybe a blossom. And in a few years some fragrant flowers. Pretty much all the bareroot roses I planted this year behaved in roughly the same way, although Sexy Rexy and Maria Schriver did slightly better.

Oh, I didn't get her as a bareroot, I got her in a 2gal bucket from a nursery here. All my bareroots did horrible this year, if they survived at all. It was just a bad year. But, with our wonderful weather we've been having as of late (yea, it's been snowing almost regularly, but we haven't gotten more than an inch at a time here in the Metro), I'm not complaining! I'm hoping that everyone will put out some winter roots & grow nice & strong for the spring!!!

A friend of a friend who worked with Streisand said that she was "beyond difficult" to work with. That level of fame and expectations tempered with extreme stage fright could make anyone "difficult". However, the bf's cousin, a chef, claimed that she loved his restaurant and complemented him. I ate several holiday dinners at his house and I wasn't impressed. I also found him a clueless braggart. And a gourmand. Anyway, I hope that the rose is less "demanding" than the lady herself.

I wouldn't call Paris Hilton an actress. A savvy businesswoman, yes, artistically talented as an actress, singer or designer, no.

I am a spring planter who is running out of room for roses. i have moved a few things this fall, but haven't added anything. I bought Tiffany because it was my beloved dog's name and I liked the bloom and fragrance. I haven't bought any other rose because of it's name, but have avoided some because I couldn't stand their namesakes. There are certain public figures that I think would be more appropriate names of noxious weeds, but I am not going to go there.

As I recall, Streisand was difficult even before she was famous. As for the clueless braggart who liked her, I'm not surprised. That's a good definition of her own personality, so they probably appreciated each other.

I agree with your description of Paris Hilton. She's making tons of money on publicity alone, just a good old-fashioned publicity hound. They have always been with us. The most famous one in my lifetime was Jayne Mansfield. Mamie Van Doren was a close runner-up. The publicity hounds I remember did literally anything for publicity, including faking their own kidnappings, and their performing talents were always marginal or nonexistent.