The Wall Street Journal: "The Sweet Smell of Success"
By ARNIE COOPER
Ever since it was first cultivated, probably about 5,000 years ago in China, the rose has left its mark on every culture as it has come to symbolize death, war and love.
In 1737, Robert Prince opened the first nursery in what would later become the U.S. Within 10 years, Prince's Flushing, N.Y., business was selling 1,600 varieties, constituting one of the world's largest collections. By the 1960s, however, Americans' concept of the ideal rose had become -- as Danielle Hahn, who runs Rose Story Farm, describes it -- "the long-stemmed grocery store 'lollipop' with a perfect shape, devoid of any fragrance and that never opens."
But Ms. Hahn's 15-acre spread in Carpinteria, a seaside hamlet 13 miles south of Santa Barbara, is helping guide a new aesthetic -- really a return to an old one -- that embraces not only fragrance, but a vivid spectrum of color, texture and petal type. With over 200 varieties and 20,000 plants brightening the normally dull foothills, the farm, which Ms. Hahn owns with her physician husband Bill, provides roses for every taste and event -- mostly for well-to-do clientele in nearby Montecito (home to Oprah Winfrey's estate) and down the coast in Malibu.