MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER ...; HYBRIDIZERS AIM FOR PERFECTION.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Staff Writer

Row upon row of glass and metal shelters fan out across the Somis farmlands, holding inside their humid chambers a dazzling display of roses - 72,000 of them, and counting.

Guided by the gentle hands of meticulous workers, new colors, new sizes, new fragrances continue to emerge.

The birds and the bees have nothing on the professional hybridizers at Bear Creek Gardens in Somis, the research arm of rose giant Jackson & Perkins. Left strictly to nature - that is, pure chance - roses could be much fewer in variety than the rainbow of choices you find now at your local nursery.

That lavender rose you so prize? It might not have existed yet if it weren't for hybridizers. The tri-colored rose that mimics a memorable sunset? Could've taken another decade before accidental cross-pollination made that rose come to life.

But for the hybridizers at Bear Creek, helping Mother Nature discover her potential is their business.

Although it's considered a science, rose breeding involves a lot of trial and error. Just as in producing human children, there are no guarantees.

``We get excited,'' said Keith Zary, vice president of research for Bear Creek. ``You do a lot of pollinating and fertilizing and checking, but sometimes it's just nice to appreciate the roses like anybody else would.''

And they do. Of three local hybridizers who have won recognition from the All-America Rose Selections - an award on par with filmdom's Oscars - all grew up with a love for gardening and roses.

Zary's gardening parents put him to work hauling stones and flats of flowers as a youngster. Now, when he's not overseeing plant trials for the company's roses around the world, Zary, 49, tends to his cutting garden of roses at home in Thousand Oaks.

Despite growing up admiring his father's rose gardens on spacious farms in California and Arizona, Bear Creek's research manager and plant breeder John Walden, 41, grew up to have a special fondness for miniature roses.

``Miniature roses are appealing because they can grow in confined spaces, for example, on a patio or balcony,'' said Walden, whose miniature yellow rose already has gotten the AARS nod for its 2001 collection of winners.

And Tom Carruth of Arcadia, research director for independent Weeks Roses in Upland, so loved roses that he ignored his college instructors' skepticism and went on to turn his avocation since age 11 into a full-time occupation.

``When I asked my professors if I could make a living breeding ornamentals (roses), they'd pat me on the back and say, `You can do that when you get home from your real job,' '' Carruth, 46, recalls. He has since become known as Mr. Stripe, for developing several striped roses.

Those strange and delightful results are born out of years of experience, some guesswork and a lot of patience.

Every day, a handful of workers toils in almost reverent silence at Bear Creek, watering, fertilizing and doing the intricate work of cross-pollination.

Dealing first with the ``father'' flower, workers remove the petals, leaving just the yellow inside parts. Then they carefully pull off the anthers, the male parts of the flower, and store them in a tiny jar. Using a small paintbrush, workers transfer the pollen from the anthers of the ``father'' rose to the pistil, the central, female part, of the ``mother'' rose.

If fertilization is successful, within 21 days, the hips - the rounded part at the end of the stem that holds the petals - swell. The hips are allowed to grow for 90 days longer, until they become big and fat and orange, Zary said.

The hips are cut open, and the seeds inside - which look very much like the seeds from an apple, a botanical cousin - are put into two months of cold storage that mimics nature's winter. Then the seeds are planted, and hybridizers wait to see what will happen.

Bear Creek crews planted 400,000 seeds in December, hoping that maybe 4,000 hardy, successful plants with the characteristics hybridizers were hoping for will result when they mature. Weeks, a much smaller operation, planted about 25,000 seeds, hoping an equally tiny percentage will be successful.

The majority of new roses that result fail to pass muster and are ground into compost. And the hybridizers try again - and again.

If any of the new roses have the characteristics hybridizers were trying for, cuttings are taken and rooted, and the bushes that grow from those cuttings begin the testing process.

Sometimes the results of cross-pollinating two roses are astonishing. While trying for a new variety of pink rose, Carruth recently came up with a pink rose with yellow polka dots. He was amazed and intrigued.

``I don't know how it happened, but we're reproducing it,'' he said.

But just because a new rose is developed doesn't mean it will be commercially successful. It could be susceptible to disease or insects, have less than a perfect rose shape, fade when cut or have any of a dozen other imperfections. That's what testers check out over a two-year period.

They also monitor fragrance, which is making a resurgence after breeders in the 1960s and '70s neglected it in pursuit of hardier, more colorful plants.

But today's hybridizers say home gardeners want roses with a distinctive aroma, and they have provided them with blooms that can range from a true damask rose smell to smells like licorice, apples, cloves or citrus.

``If you watch people with roses, it is not unlike a wine connoisseur,'' Carruth said. ``People sense the color and then go right to the nose to judge its fragrance.''

A few years ago, Zary said, J&P developed a rose with an aroma that nobody could identify. Finally, somebody recognized it: It was turpentine.

``I wouldn't call it a great marketing tool,'' Walden offered.

So into the compost heap it went. It's one of many trial-and-error roses that gardeners won't find in their local plant nursery.

Your name here; If you've got the money, give rose personal touch

A rose by another name ... could be your name.

If, that is, you've got $75,000 to spend.

Jackson & Perkins, the world's largest rose producer, recently began its Custom Rose program, which lets people, organizations or companies willing to part with $75,000 name a new rose developed by J&P's hybridizers.

And there are other perks, as well.

Well-heeled rose-namers and a companion are flown first-class from anywhere in the United States to Los Angeles, stay two nights in a five-star hotel suite, get trinkets from Cartier and gourmet meals before traveling by chauffeured limousine to the J&P research facility in Somis.

``They're ushered into a room full of roses - lavender, orange, pink, white, red, all colors - and they can pick any one they like and name it anything they like,'' said J&P spokesman Bill Ihle. ``Of course, good taste and exclusivity (they can't duplicate an existing rose name) are the abiding hallmarks.''

When rose planting time rolls around, the rose-namer receives 300 rose bushes, plus a case of Dom Perignon champagne.

Ihle won't say how many people have paid to name roses, or what the names of those roses are. A guarantee of secrecy is part of the package, he says.

``All I can say is it's been a very popular program,'' Ihle said. ``There have been some very, very touching stories, some very heart-rending requests from people.''

- Carol Bidwell

Help your roses endure the heat

Helping your rose garden survive the Valley's hottest summer months can be a challenge. But here are some tips to keep your roses happy even when the sun is beating down.

Roses normally need 1 to 2 inches of water a week, in a single watering session, from early spring through fall. But when the temperature climbs into the 90s and 100s and the humidity plummets, increase watering to every three or four days, watering about twice as often.

To help keep roses fresh n the heat, give the bushes a fine spray from the hose early in the morning to wash off the dust. But don't water late in the evening; wet leaves overnight can promote blackspot and rust.

Roses need constant nutrients, and increased watering leaches nutrients out of the soil quicker, so fertilizing is required more often. With both liquid and dry fertilizers, apply half as much twice as often (half-strength of a water-soluble fertilizer, for example, every two weeks), but don't over-fertilize. If you mistakenly overdo it, soak the plant thoroughly to wash out the excess.

Roses can burn and wilt quickly in the summer sun. Dead-head spent roses, cutting at a 45-degree angle about -1/4-inch above a leaf with five leaflets. A new rose will grow from the base of that leaf in about 42 days.

Source: ``Ortho's All About Roses'' (Ortho Books; $11.95) by Tommy Cairns of Studio City.

- Carol Bidwell

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos, 2 Boxes

Photo: (1--Color) (Ran in L.A. LIFE only) putting mettle to the petal

Rose hybridizers master thorny science to create new varieties

(2--3--Color) (Ran in L.A. LIFE only -- 2--Color only) At Bear Creek Gardens, where roses are bred for Jackson & Perkins, numbered tags hang from differently pollinated rosebuds.

(4) Keith Zary is vice president of research for Bear Creek Gardens/Jackson Perkins. His past All-America Rose Selections include Artistry, Timeless, Fame! and Opening Night.

(5) no caption (Rose)

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News

Box: (1--Ran in L.A. LIFE only) Your name here (See text)

(2--Ran in L.A. LIFE only) Help your roses endure the heat (See text)