Meet American rose breeder Tom Carruth

Tom Carruth is one of the greats of modern rose breeding – the winner of 11 All-America Rose Selections (AARS) and creator of more than 150 cultivars.

He was barely school age when he knew his destiny lay in the garden. “I was a strange child,” he jokes. “I knew I wanted to work with flowers when I was five and told my parents. I probably freaked my dad out just a little bit, but they were supportive.”

By the age of 11 he had his first rose garden at the family’s home in the small town of Pampa, Texas. A couple of years later, in junior high school, he began biology classes.

He says: “We were learning about genetics, and it completely fascinated me. I was tending roses early on, so the combination of interest in flowers and genetics led me to want to be a plant breeder. And a rose breeder, specifically. But there are very few of us in the United States and in the world, so there wasn’t much chance of this.

Rose breeding ambition

“I would ask my college professors: ‘Do you think I can make a living breeding roses?’ And they would laugh and pat me on the back. But when I finished up my graduate work in plant breeding, I was just in the right spot at the right time. I started working with Jackson and Perkins, which is a huge name in the US, and which was at its full monster size at that point, too.”

Being in the right spot at the right time was not accidental. As he was completing his master’s degree in plant breeding, Carruth wrote to J&P’s legendary breeder, William Warriner. Warriner – a winner of 19 AARS – must have liked something in the eager young wannabe. Carruth secured an interview and was offered a job – not in the breeding department but, rather, in research.  He says: “It was an amazing education as a young horticulturalist, coming in with these seasoned breeding professionals and great marketers. The president of the company was tough to work for, and demanding, but he knew what he was doing.”

After about three and a half years his breakthrough into breeding came with a job as a rose breeder at Armstrong Nurseries. That was in 1979. He was to breed roses for another 33 years – first at Armstrong and then for 25 years at another famous home, Weeks Roses.

Tom Carruth with ‘Julia Child’, Floribunda, (2004). Image: Martin Stott

‘Julia Child’/’Absolutely fabulous’

Which rose is he proudest of? “Oh, the one that’s had the most international acclaim is ‘Julia Child’,” he says. The rose, released in 2004, is named after the influential American TV chef and author. Child had chosen the rose that was to carry her name, but Carruth is sad that she died a few months after its release and never got to grow it herself – or meet its creator.

In Europe the rose is better known as ‘Absolutely Fabulous’. The name is apt. Bold yellow blooms contrast with deep green leaves. Carruth says: “It’s great because it looks the same everywhere it grows, which is very unusual. People don’t realise how much roses can change when they go to different climates. It’s a nice yellow floribunda – a golden yellow – and it blooms beautifully through the season. It’s very clean. It holds a nice round habit. And it has a liquorice candy fragrance. Now, was it what I wanted it to be when I made the cross? No, but we’ll take it!”

‘Barbra Streisand’, Hybrid tea, (2001). Image: Tom Carruth

‘Barbra Streisand’

Several of his roses have been named after celebrities, including ‘Barbra Streisand’. He says: “She was probably the most selective of all of the celebrities. She had to grow the rose herself and she did. So she took three years to make up her mind. She wanted something super fragrant. But once she committed, she was unlike other celebrities – she really got behind it. Barbra promoted her rose like crazy. She put it on her CD cover. She had blossoms cut and flown into her performances. I think she was great.”

‘Marilyn Monroe’, Hybrid tea, (2002). Image: Tom Carruth

Another celebrity rose is ‘Marilyn Monroe’. “Getting the rights on that name was really a surprise. I didn’t think we could, but it fits the rose beautifully, because it’s platinum blonde and absolutely gorgeous,” he says. “And it has thorns up to here,” he adds, putting his hand to his chin.

‘Ebb Tide’

For me, meeting Carruth at a World Federation of Rose Societies Conference in Sweden is particularly exciting because a favourite rose in my garden is one of his – ‘Ebb Tide’. Peter Beales describes the colours as “mauve and smoky purple” and the scent “spicy”.

Carruth says: “It was a real colour breakthrough for me in my career. One of my goals was to achieve a velvet plum colour. So when that family started flowering out in the field I was doing back flips. It was just fantastic to see all the colours.”

‘Ebb Tide’, Floribunda, (2001). Image: Tracie Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0

Carruth achieved the colouring through a broad mix of different parents (a trick taught him by another great breeder, Sam McGredy). “It brings in Harkness’s ‘International Herald Tribune’. It’s got work from Ralph Moore, the great American rose breeder, who was very innovative – that’s ‘Sweet Chariot’. It’s got French bloodlines, American bloodlines, New Zealand bloodlines. And all mixed together, we achieve that purply colour.”

From this you get a sense of the complexity of successful rose breeding – the trials, the errors, and why it takes ten years or more to bring a rose to market from cross pollination and through rigorous testing and selection. It makes the early years of a breeder’s career barren, but the pay off is on retirement.

‘Easy on the Eyes’, (2018). Image: Tom Carruth

The final blooms

Carruth left Weeks in 2012 to curate the Rose Collection at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. But his roses have continued to be released. He says: “I’m really proud of my latter introductions. One from 2018 is called ‘Easy on the Eyes’. It’s a small-flowered shrub with huge clusters on it that holds a tight habit and is absolutely clean of any disease. The flowers open up pink with a raspberry eye, and then they fade to lavender with a purple eye, and then finally, white with a purple eye. And all those colours are in the same cluster. In the spring bloom it looks like in azalea. You can hardly see any foliage, and the fragrance is a killer – a wonderful, cinnamon and spice fragrance.

Along that same line, I have a variety called ‘Perfume Factory’, which came out in 2023. It’s a deep magenta colour, a very strong grower and intensely fragrant and complex in its fragrance. These roses have been tested tough. We’re not just looking for a good bloom, but for cleanliness and disease resistance and vigour and handsomeness of the plant as well.”

‘Perfume Factory’, (2023). Image: Tom Carruth

‘Miss Manners’, (2024) and ‘Make me Blush’, (2024). Image: Tom Carruth

‘Make me Blush’

His last roses were released this year (2024). “There’s a hybrid tea that’s a soft yellow that blushes coral, called ‘Make me Blush’. And my final rose is a pink grandiflora, which is kind of ironic, because I never bred for pink at all. Pink you get naturally – it happens. But this one has a great colour tone on its old-fashioned form – sturdy and stout and a free bloomer. It’s called ‘Miss Manners’ – after the American columnist and authority on etiquette. And if you know me, that’s ironic as well. So that will be my last.”

The Huntington Library Rose garden collection. Image: Tom Carruth

Does he miss the breeding? He says: “I miss seeing the babies, because that was always an exciting time – when they were starting to open and you never knew what they were going to be. Do I miss the corporate stuff? No. At the Huntington I’m out with plants every day in a garden setting. I’m learning new things from a horticultural point of view, and that’s always exciting.”

Checking out the Huntington, and its three-acres rose garden, I can see what he means. The rose garden alone has 2,500 individual shrubs and over 1300 cultivars. The whole garden extends to 130 acres and includes more than a dozen themed gardens. It’s one for the bucket list – hopefully with Tom Carruth as my guide.