Not everyone has had the privilege of knowing the 'King of Miniature Roses' as a close family friend, but I did. My Mom (Dee Bennett) and Ralph met in the late 1960's. He introduced Mom to her first mini roses, taught her to hybridize and to propagate these ownroot plants. Then, he did something that no other hybridizer at the time would do. He encouraged her...a woman...to become a nursery woman in a field which was considered the domain of men.

Without the help and loving encouragement from Ralph Moore, Mom never would have considered opening Tiny Petals Nursery, she never would have begun hybridizing roses and might never have even grown a mini rose.

Ralph Moore not only gave the rose world hundreds of new roses over the years that he created, but he is responsible for the training, growth and creations of numerous other hybridizers, like my Mom. Without Ralph, the rose world would be a very different place.

Image your gardens without mini roses. Few, if any, American mini creations do not have Ralph Moore connected to their past. I know that we would not have Magic Carrousel, Rise 'n Shine and all of the other wonderful Moore minis; but you also would not have any Dee Bennett minis. You might not even have Nor'East minis. So many of the mini roses we love have Ralph's minis in their gene pool.

I don't think that any person in the rose world has created more roses than Ralph. His creations are numbered in the hundreds; but they should be numbered in the thousands, since he is also the 'grandfather' to every rose that came from one of his creations.

As for me, I will never forget the first time that I met that wonderful, humble, delightful man. It was in the early 1970's at a rose show. He was judging along side his dear friend Mary Marshall. I was thrilled to meet both of them and the lady, named Judy Fischer, who Ralph had just honored with a namesake rose.

In a joking manner, I said, "You could always name a rose for me. My initials are SOB." I was Sue O'Brien back in those days. Ralph's response was immediate and perfect. He said, "I have called a lot of roses 'That' over the years, but I never thought of registering one with 'that name'."

A couple of years later, I had the opportunity to spend a day with Ralph at his nursery in Visalia. I was amazed to see one large rose bush (I believe that it was Zorina.) covered with close to a thousand small, white, glassene bags. When I asked him about the little baggies, Ralph told me that those were all 'crosses'. At the time, he was doing more that 50,000 crosses per year. Of all of those crosses, he harvested even more seeds and yet only kept and introduced a 'very select few, new roses' each year.

Ralph Moore spent his life working with roses, and his work has blessed the world with some of the finest roses ever known.

Thank you God for giving us Ralph Moore, if only for 102 years.

Sue Curry
(formerly Sue O'Brien)