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Homes

Smelling the roses every day

Tampa's Fermin Rodriguez has had a long love affair with roses. He's a champion grower and a judge of rose shows.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published May 6, 2005

TAMPA - Fermin Rodriguez cradles a rose named Guinevere in the palm of his hand, white, fat voluptuous, with a hint of apricot.

The yard is fragrant and serene, a sideways view of Tampa Bay peeking around a curve in the canal.

Wind chimes sing in a strong breeze.

Sun glints off a wishing ball.

At 77, Rodriguez, a retired pharmacist, son of Ybor cigarmakers and Tampa's reigning rose king, is very much at home.

"See how beautiful?" he asks, of rose after rose, some with blooms as big as coffee saucers. Others, luscious and well-tended, wear names like Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Lipstick and Lace.

He points out one called "Bon Bon" so pink and frilly that it looks more like a camellia than a rose, and another he planted because it shares a name with his wife, Laura.

Rodriguez, a prize-winning rose exhibitor whose garden was once featured on HGTV's Gardener's Diary, has been tending his roses for a half-century. They bloom in painterly profusion at his courtyard-style house, tucked away on a cul-de-sac off West Shore Boulevard.

Right now, 100 different bushes grow in his small yard, though he has had as many as 150 before heart bypass surgery a few years ago slowed him down.

Kidney shaped beds in front of the house pop with gorgeous blooms, a treat for neighbors and people driving by, he says.

"His roses are amazing. He's one of my biggest mentors. I've learned so much from him about growing them," says Gretchen Ward Warren, a professor of dance at the University of South Florida and a vice president of the Tampa Rose Society. "I love to take people to his garden because his roses are so spectacular."

As Mother's Day nears, Rodriguez, a respected rose show judge, consulting rosarian and longtime member of the Tampa Rose Society, mulls the popularity of America's national flower.

"I love roses so much that I've reached a point where I consider them a necessity in my life," he says.

Though florist-type roses are hybridized to last a long time in a vase, nothing beats a homegrown garden bouquet.

The most fragrant?

A red rose called "Mr. Lincoln" is Rodriguez's top garden pick for the mother in your life.

Even Good Housekeeping magazine has a rose named for it. In its May 2005 issue, magazine editors announced that Jackson & Perkins have named the light pink hybrid tea rose in honor of the magazine's 120th birthday.

The Tampa Rose Society will offer cut roses from local gardens - including the Rodriguez garden - for a small donation all day on Saturday in the center court of University Mall. And the USF Botanical Garden will offer a special sale and education event highlighting roses and orchids from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. "I don't think there's a more beautiful flower than the rose," raves Rodriguez, whose parents gardened by necessity, growing pigeon peas, greens and tomatoes behind their house in Ybor.

Rodriguez started gardening in his 20s and once courted hibiscus as his flower of choice. He changed his mind after buying a couple of rose bushes at the old Davis Islands supermarket. They grew beautifully in his yard but the thorns pricked him so many times, he finally mowed the plants down.

"I felt like every time I walked by them, they reached out and scratched me," he says. "I finally just let the grass grow over them."

After attending the Tampa Rose Society show back in 1980, he again lost his heart to roses.

"I was absolutely amazed at the beauty of the roses," he recalls. "Then, a friend took me to see them in his back yard and it got me very excited."

After retiring as a pharmacist and selling his business - Westshore Pharmacy - back in the late 1980s, he devoted himself completely to his hobby. Over the years, he interspersed other plants among the roses for color - verbena, day lilies and wild orchid, for example - and textured the garden with unexpected surprises: a hand-made mosaic rose birdbath, a gnarled driftwood limb, a bow-tie-sporting frog on a swing.

From the screened back patio looking out over the small swimming pool and a stretch of canal, he can gaze out over a colorful and perfumed garden, homage to his passion for roses. He long ago ran out of room in the back yard, so he started growing them in front.

Twice a year, usually around Thanksgiving and Christmas, he and Laura prepare homegrown bouquets for the neighbors.

"We don't pick the roses for ourselves because the cat eats them," she says, referring to their longhaired gray and white Himalayan, Tommy. "But it's very nice having them in the yard to look at and smell. I can't imagine not having roses in my life."

Their most beautiful roses, they say, bloom in December, but springtime in Tampa runs a close second. Even after a hard April rainstorm, the roses bloomed in gorgeous profusion, their names as lovely as their looks: Cajun sunrise, Fourth of July, Our Lady of Guadeloupe, Moonstone and Black Magic, Louise Estes.

Still, Rodriguez remains apologetic, a little spoiled by the backyard beauty he has created over the decades.

"Come at Christmastime," he says. "That's when our roses are the prettiest."

[Last modified May 5, 2005, 01:31:12]