I received this letter from my sister who is a church member that has been caring for a number of Mr Earnest Holmes roses that are growing in her church garden in San Jacinto. I am a Rosarian and member of the San Diego Rose Society. I have successfully rooted several specimens of this rose and posted the first bloom in early Nov 2021. It's too early to offer a definitive rose class but it's large, pink and fragrant. Here is a one page sheet my sister found in the office concerning the rose. Upon research, I found that Earnest Holmes was the founder of the Church of Religious Science.

THE 'ERNEST HOLMES ROSE'

Nearly 30 years ago, my grandfather, a nurseryman, rose grower and pioneer, told me of a remarkable rose. It had come from a modest farm out on Sanderson Ave, northwest of Hemet. Its owner was the wonderfully kind man, Louis Strickland. Mr. Strickland brought the rose in from his ranch in the 1960's and put it in the yard of his little retirement home south of town. 'Grandpa' Lindquist had known of it for years and, worried that its owner was in declining health, he suggested that I propagate some new stock from it before it was lost. His comment then was that this big pink rose was the largest he had ever seen and that he couldn't name it.
The rose was budded in the Howard Rose Company field in 1971. Within its first year, great size of flower and foliage were obvious. Evident as well was a color, deep rose pink, like a fuschia, that held up and didn't 'burn off' to an ugly magenta as do many similarly colored roses. Once the plants got under way, and especially in the green house or where there was partial shade, the blooms grew larger still and its mid-green, semi-glossy leaves could be five inches from base to tip. A bonus was the fragrance. There is a very strong Damask rose character to this, along with penetrating, delicious ethers that come not from the modern hybrid tea rose family, but the older tea roses of yesteryear.
This rose was never identified by anyone out of the hybridizing community of which my father, Robert Lindquist, Sr., was a member. Nor was it tagged by dozens of rose experts who saw it not only in Hemet, but on the judging table at numerous rose shows in Southern California.
Its scent and purist deep rose color, untainted by crossing with modern, brighter rose colors, lead me to believe that it is a first generation hybrid out of tea and hybrid perpetual class rose parents, perhaps introduced before 1935. No rose that I'm acquainted with rivals the size and robust appearance of this variety once it's established.
It is a man's rose in every way, yet more than that it is pure in heart. With simple, ungarnished form and a wonderful fragrance this rose embodies everything spiritual. It deserves to be adored and revered and never lost again. What better way than by naming it after Ernest Holmes as our living tribute to a very honest and spiritual man, the founder of Religious Science.

Rob Lindquist - July 2000