How roses get their names. Plus, the latest installment of the beginner's garden.

Click  here  for the fourth installment of Slate's guide to planting a beginner's garden. Click here, here, and here forthe first three installments.

Walk through a big rose garden and you may find yourself asking odd questions, like whether Barbara Bush smells better than Barbra Streisand. In this category, Streisand wins. Known for being exacting, the singer tested several candidates in her home garden before settling on a highly fragrant lavender hybrid tea as her namesake.

Every year American rose breeders turn out ever more complex crosses. Many are named not for the qualities of the rose but for a person. (Here's how you could become one of them.)

Barbara Bush sells not because of its coral-pink color or disease-resistance but for the perceived personality of the former first lady. Here's how its producer, Jackson & Perkins, the biggest U.S. rose-breeding company, appeals to prospective buyers: "Her down-to-earth style, intelligence, and genuineness have won her the respect and admiration of millions of Americans." And indeed, a rose bush undoubtedly has the quality of being "down to earth."

It takes about 10 years to research, develop, and introduce a rose. Out there in trial fields there are tens of thousands of rose bushes growing, labeled with numbers or codes. Marketers lay the groundwork for personality battles. I'm rooting for this year's Julia Child to overtake recent big sellers Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan. Catalog copy describes his rose as "upright, energetic and noble" and hers as "profoundly graceful."

Julia Child was chosen by the chef herself at Weeks Roses, a company in California's San Joaquin Valley. The blossoms start out butter yellow, fade to rich cream, and smell of anise.

According to the rules set out by the registration committee of the American Rose Society, the breeder of a rose gets to name it. Committee member Marily Young says the committee requires a letter of authorization from the person after whom the rose will be named. (Difficult in the cases of Mr. Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.) You can't use the name of another plant genus, so no Dahlia rose. The committee will not approve names containing profanity. But in 1933, they did approve "Nigger Boy" (a velvety maroon). The name remains unchanged in the 11^th edition of the society's Modern Roses.

Before the 1950s, roses named for people mostly honored royalty, relatives of the grower, and a few deceased notables. Early in the 20^th century, one of the founders of Jackson & Perkins, Charles Perkins, named a rose after his granddaughter, Dorothy. Her pink climber bloom was grown in the United States and England. In Noel Coward's 1930s musical Shadow Play, the heroine asks a young man she's just met on the terrace, "Are you good at gardens?" He responds, "I'm not good, but I'm persevering. And I can tell a Dorothy Perkins a mile away." (Coward scholars, forgive me if I don't have the line exactly right.)

In the 1950s and 1960s, American rose growers decided that gardeners would rather have Bing Crosby in the back yard than Mr. Perkins' granddaughter. They named waves of roses after Hollywood and TV stars: Arlene Francis, Bob Hope, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Carmen Miranda, Lucille Ball, Eva Gabor, and Ingrid Bergman. Most are no longer found at your local garden center, but they may still be blooming away in someone's garden; Ingrid, dark red and fragrant, has serious staying power.

Royalty still sells. Queen Elizabeth, introduced in 1954 to honor her coronation, still appeals, even to us colonials. The combination of royalty, hyper-celebrity, and tragedy led to a brisk scuffle over naming honors after the death of Princess Diana. Jackson & Perkins emerged as the U.S. winner with Diana, Princess of Wales, a white touched with pale pink.