In the prologue of her book, Otherwise Normal People, Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening, Aurelia C. Scott writes: I knew the subject of this book would be the people of the rose world. These are gardeners for whom "Butterscotch is a large flowered light orange climbers, not an ice cream topping: 'Mr. Chips' is not Robert Donat, or even Peter O'Toole, but a hybrid tea that flowers repeatedly in a Tequila Sunrise like blend of yellow, orange, and pink."

If you happen to know and love one of those people, a gift they might enjoy would be to have a
rose hybrid named after them. Each year Select Roses offers 3 roses to be named. This rose is then propagated at the nursery and then sold to suppliers under this name.

But this price for this sort of immortality isn't cheap. The prices for 2007 range from $4000.00 for the miniature apricot-orange bloom (as pictured above), and $8,500.00 for a salmon hybrid tea rose.

FYI: There are less expensive gifts along these lines. One year I adopted a bat for my father through the program at Carlsbad Cavern for $5.00. My father named him Little Willie, and he gets the pleasure of knowing that he's is out in the night sky, keeping the mosquito population at bay.