A Presentation on Workhorse Roses for Southern California Gardens by Tom Carruth

After retiring from a very successful career as a hybridizer with Weeks Wholesale Rose Grower, Tom Carruth was hired by the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens as the E. L. & Ruth B. Shannon Curator of the Rose Collections.

Tom has created over 150 hybrids and is the recipient of 11 All-America Rose Selections (AARS). And in 2011, he was awarded the Luther Burbank Award for extraordinary achievement in the field of plant breeding by the American Horticultural Society.

Tom mentioned that his love for plants began at a very young age. When he was 11 years old, he was selling Burpee Seeds and saved enough money to buy a collection of nine roses from a mail order nursery.  After high school, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in horticulture and a master’s degree in plant breeding from Texas A&M.

At the Huntington, Tom oversees a 3-acre garden which contains more than 2,500 roses and more than 1,300 different cultivars from all over the world.

According to Tom, to make it onto the list of a “Workhorse Rose,” the roses have to meet the following five standards:

• Bloom their guts out.
• Repeat bloom quickly and abundantly.
• Have a harmonious color combination throughout the life of the flower and drop the old petals clean.
• Hold a bushy full habit with good foliage color & retention and attractive distribution of bloom.
• Possess a high level of natural disease resistance.

Among the list of 41 roses Tom talked about are “Our Lady of Guadalupe” which is pink in color with a very tight form; “Secret” which blooms abundantly and is very fragrant; ”Love Song” with large pale lavender ruffled flowers; “Koko Loko” which starts cocoa color, changes to beige, and finishes lavender; “Perfume Factory” which more than lives up to its name as far as its fragrance; “Julia Child,” a favorite of Tom, is a perfect shade of light yellow and always looks good; and of course, the “Huntington 100th” in honor of the Huntington’s centennial. It blooms profusely with many different colors on the same bush.

Breeding a new rose is a lengthy process and can take as much as 10 years. When naming a rose after a living person, you have to get that person’s permission to do so. Roses named in the US are very often sold in foreign countries under different names. The name has to be suitable for the commercial market where the rose is being sold, otherwise it won’t sell as well.

To perform well, roses require about six hours of sun and water. Also make sure the bushes are not too crowded together; having air circulation around them is very good for the roses.  Using mulch around the roses, making sure to keep it away from the crown in order to allow the roots to breathe, will help keep the weeds down and reduce the water needs. Tom recommended fertilizing the roses two or three times during their growing season using Scott’s Natural Lawn Food.  The roses at the Huntington are pruned in January by removing about half of the bush height and stripping all the leaves and any branches that cross and touch each other. To encourage more blooms, deadheading is recommended from when the blooming cycle starts to early November.

For a source to buy roses from, Tom recommended Otto & Sons Nursery in Fillmore, CA.

When asked if he has a favorite creation of his, Tom hesitated a bit and then said “Julia Child.” This rose has been introduced internationally more than any other rose he has created; it performs and looks the same no matter where it is planted, but it is called differently in different parts of the world.

When asked to name a rose that does well in the shade, Tom responded, “It is a camellia!”

Post and photos by Emina Darakjy
Friends of Robinson Gardens Society Garden Tour Volunteer and Docent-in-Training