Garden Legends Live On By Designs & Impressions They Leave on The Earth | Our Hearts and Minds
Gaga’s Garden Calendar of Roses represented a dream come true. What was so special about that calendar? Here’s the back story: When my picture of a ‘Julia Child’ was chosen for the American Rose Society calendar in 2014, friends asked me, “why don’t you do your own rose calendar?â€
What’s In A Name?
The calendar included roses like ‘Elle’, bred by Meilland Roses for the month of April, a rose near and dear to my heart. I planted ‘Elle’ when my first granddaughter was born in her honor. People often want roses that are named for or remind them of themselves, family members friends or celebrities. They ask me to assist them in their search to locate them. The names of roses in the garden are a topic for conversation often on my garden tours. So you see rose names matter.
“He (David C.H. Austin) used to say that the easiest way to kill a rose was to give it a bad name.” ~ Michael Marriott
“A rose is an argument. It proclaims the triumph of beauty over brutality, of gentleness over violence, of the ephemeral over the lasting, and of the universal over the particular. The same rose bursts into bloom on the North Cape and in the Sahara Desert.â€~Alain Meilland
A Rose Garden Says So Much About Who We Are
A rose garden can give one a venue of remembrance, an outlet for stress, a show place for photography, a sorcerer’s delight for alchemy, a veritable rainbow of colors, and a tapestry of fragrance so deep it touches the soul. The delight and knowledge I’ve gained through conversations about names of roses has continued to inspire me. Roses offer a way to softly gain access to the five senses in the garden that then gently whisper thoughts of life and our loved ones worth remembering that only a walk in a rose garden can inspire. Listen and let the garden speak to us. Year!
