Aurelia C. Scott

“I hated roses when I first came here. Did Keith tell you?” Debbie Vachuda whips a baby rose, roots flailing, from potting soil and drops it into a four-foot high plastic garbage can. “Hated them.” She uproots a pink-budded one. “But Keith converted me. I’m madly in love with roses now.” She lets go. The seedling plummets into the trash.

Deeply tanned and lanky in blue jeans, Dr. Keith Zary leans against another planting bench as he watches his assistant kill roses.

“Debbie has a cold heart. That’s why she’s so good.” Debbie laughs. Keith smiles.

“Shove this up your nose.” Debbie decapitates an apricot seedling and holds the blossom toward us.

Keith leans over to inhale. “Nice.”

I sniff. “Oh, that’s lovely.” It actually smells of apricots.

Debbie drops blossom and seedling onto a rising mound of sacrifices in the trash barrel. “Slow grower, sparse bloom, poor form,” she explains when she sees my shocked expression.

“She’s a brute.” Keith’s smile lights his eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. “It’s great.” Keith Zary is Vice President for Research for Jackson & Perkins, the country’s largest rose purveyor and cause of many a rose-lover’s obsession.

I stopped by J&P’s research facility in Somos, near Los Angeles, after my visit with Rachel and Phil. I’d been impressed with Rachel’s affection for the cream-and-pink Keith Zary hybrid tea named ‘Gemini.’ As it turns out, ‘Gemini’ is Keith’s favorite among his own roses. He says that plant’s qualities were apparent so early in the breeding process that it was immediately flagged for reproduction.

Evidently, ‘Gemini’ took the rose exhibition world by storm when it was introduced in 2000. According to Bob Martin, who keeps track of exhibition statistics, ‘Gemini’ won more Queens of Show from 2000 to 2004 than any other hybrid tea. In 2005, it won the ARS Members’ Choice Award.

J&P has bred hundreds of rose-show hybrid tea Queens and won more All America Rose Selection (AARS) awards – 63 and counting – than any other American nursery. The AARS competition, which was begun in 1938 by the ARS, is one of many rose assessments that take place around the world annually. In countries as far flung as South Africa and the Netherlands, new roses are evaluated in test gardens for one to three years. Judges examine than everything from bloom color to disease resistance. Top scorers go on to decorate the pages of the world’s rose catalogues and color our gardens. Losers are dug up and trashed. Some other flowers, including tulips and carnations, are also tested in international trials, yet only the rose competes in as many contests held in so many countries. We love the Queen of Flowers, but we make her work for our adoration.

With seven AARS awards to his name, Keith is well on his way to matching the AARS record of 24-wins set by J&P’s famed hybridizer, the late Bill Warriner.

‘Gemini’ may be Keith’s favorite because its blossoms are paler than the other prize-winning roses he has created. White, you see, is his preferred color.

“Whereas I like roses that go ‘Bam!’” Debbie has stopped her ruthless culling and come over to chat beside a greenhouse bench covered in two-year old roses. “Big, bold, loud.” She says this with her hands on blue-jeaned hips, honey-hair atumble.

“I prefer pastel,” insists Keith.

Debbie and Keith regard each other. They grin. He says, “Having different taste in roses works. We miss fewer potential beauties.”

Keith began his career breeding peas and beans. Peas and beans offer a certain fascination; after all, Gregor Mendel learned a lot about heredity by studying succeeding generations of peas. But in 1985, when Keith spotted an advertisement in American Vegetable Grower Magazine for an Assistant Director of Research for Jackson & Perkins, he applied immediately. He says that it looked like fun, which wasn’t an attribute he associated with legumes. Keith, who is a Californian by way of Canada and Minnesota, had always loved roses, but he had never thought that anyone actually bred them and made a living.

“Roses are the most perfect of perennials. They bloom all season. They flower prolifically. They have fragrance. They have amazing colors. They have amazing flower forms. They come in every size from dwarf to climber. They are the most rewarding and the toughest of plants.” He shakes his head. “What could be better than this job? I still have a copy of that ad.” © 2007 - Aurelia C. Scott