Carol's Corner

The speaker for our March meeting is a lovely girl named Suzanne Horn, whom some of us in the Riverside Rose Society were fortunate enough to meet at our rose show last June (see photo at right) when she walked off with most of the hardware (trophies) we had purchased for the show! That’s right! Suzanne is an enthusiastic rosarian and exhibitor from Glendale, California, who has a winning record. She also has a background in entertainment and has performed at venues from the Hollywood Bowl to Caesar's Palace, and says she always loved those roses on opening night!

Suzanne's adventure in roses began in the year 2000 when she was gifted with a miniature rose from a grocery store on Valentine's Day. One was certainly not enough, and roses soon became her obsession.

Thanks to the mentoring of Robbie Tucker from Rosemania on the Internet and exhibitors Bob Martin and Lynn Snetsinger at home, Suzanne began to exhibit and rapidly became very successful. She currently brings home over 100 trophies a year, and garnered 163 trophies in 2005. She particularly loves miniature roses, and has won a total of 25 Mini Queens, to date, along with numerous hybrid tea queens, Dowager Queens, District and National trophies. A recent edition of Rose Exhibitor's Forum ranks Suzanne No. 2 in the nation for queens of show won per year, behind the formidable Cal Hayes, also from southern California.

In 2003, at the encouragement of some of her fellow exhibitors, Suzanne began sharing her knowledge about growing and showing roses with others by speaking to rose societies around the State of California, and in 2004 was invited to be a featured speaker at the prestigious Tenarky Midwinter Conference in Kentucky. In the summer of 2004, Suzanne became a Consulting Rosarian, and in March of last year was a teacher at the Pacific Southwest District Consulting Rosarian Seminar. Last summer, she also became an apprentice ARS Judge. What a busy girl she is!

Suzanne presently grows over 500 roses of all types at her Glendale home, and all of them are in containers! She is also a writer and pens the Rose of the Month article for the Pacific Southwest District webpage. She also has articles pending in the next edition of Rose Exhibitor's Forum and the upcoming ARS Annual.

At our March 7th meeting, Suzanne will be giving a colorful PowerPoint presentation about exhibiting roses, in which hundreds of beautiful photographs will be featured. You won’t want to miss this meeting – make your plans now to attend!

To see what Suzanne won at our 2005 show take a look at the show results.