To the late ISU professor Griffith Buck, roses were a way of life.

During his lifetime, Buck produced more than 85 hybrids of roses, which can be found blooming throughout Ames and the United States.

Buck patented five of his rose varieties, of which the most well known is the Carefree Beauty. He died in 1991 at the age of 76.

“[Buck’s] main objective when hybridizing the roses was hardiness for winter survival,” said Ruby Buck, Griffith’s wife. “He also developed some disease-resistant varieties.”

Griffith received his Ph.D. from Iowa State in 1953 in horticulture and immunology. While at Iowa State, he taught beginning horticulture, ornamentals, annuals and floral design, while working on hybridizing roses.

Ruby Buck said her husband became interested in roses after he began writing to a woman for a Spanish assignment in high school.

“They were required to correspond with a Spanish student. He found a rose book with the name Pedro Dot in it and asked this man if he knew of a young person to correspond with them,” she said.

It turned out Dot was a famous rose breeder in Spain, and the woman, Maria Antonia, was his niece.

“Whenever this girl would write, the uncle would tell her to write about roses,” Ruby Buck said.

Griffith Buck and Antonia exchanged letters for about seven years.

“One thing her uncle told her to write, was that if you hybridize a rose, you get something no one else has ever seen,” Ruby Buck said.

Nick Howell, superintendent of Reiman Gardens, was one of Buck’s students. He now cares for 44 varieties of Buck’s roses that are found in Reiman Gardens.

“[Griffith] was very good at what he did,” Howell said. “He had a lot of passion and was a very productive person in his work. That is why I admire him so much.”

Besides Reiman Gardens, Buck’s roses can be found throughout Ames and across the country. He developed patents for Carefree Beauty, Blue Skies, Red Sparkler, Buckaroo and Bucred. He named many of his roses after people, country dances and prairies. Some of the more unique names include Freckle Face, Hawkeye Belle, Pearlie Mae and Prairie Sunset.

Ruby Buck said the color of Blue Skies is one of the closest blue roses that have been developed, but it is still closer to a lavender color.

“Unless they can change a rose’s chromosomes, there will never be a blue rose because the right pigment color isn’t in them,” she said.

Ruby Buck has her own favorite hybrids, but she said her husband didn’t have a particular preference.

“If I had to pick a favorite, and I’m not saying that I have just one, but it would probably be Earth’s Song,” she said. “The one he was looking at was the favorite at that time. Each one had something a little different that he liked about it.”