New garden rose named after writer and plantsman Arturo Croci

Columnist, (horticultural) writer and plantsman Arturo Croci from Italy has been honoured with a garden rose named after him. He attended a ceremony at Italy’s leading home and garden show, Orticolario, on 29 September 2023 to pour champagne over Rosa ‘Arturo Croci’.

The red tea hybrid, Rosa ‘Arturo Croci, is a breed of famed Italian rose breeder Sergio Patrucco, who created the rose in 2017. The variety features a traditional musky old-rose fragrance and soft red to magenta flowers, which beautifully contrast with the leathery leaves. In the garden, it stands 150cm tall and stands out for its high petal count  (between 50-55).

Patrucco, who earned a name in rose breeding thanks to his highly successful red ‘Dallas’ rose, presented the rose to Croci as a token of friendship and appreciation for his book entitled ‘Facitori Italiani di fiori e piante ornamentali, creatività e creazioni’ (‘Italian horticulturists: creativity and creations’). In this book, Croci and co-author Giovanni Serra have sought to recapture the past by telling the stories of the men and women who largely contributed to the success and growth of ornamental horticulture in Italy, a country that until today is Europe’s largest producer of ornamentals (27,000 companies operating on 30,000 ha of land.

The book required five years of research to understand better the past presence and future of Italy’s ornamentals sector.

It was not the first time that a plant was named Arturo Croci. In October 2014, Croci called his own Sedum, also at Orticolario. The Sedum lydium glaucum f. crestatum ‘Arturo Croci’ is a bred from Ciriè (province of Torino)-based Floricoltura Claudio Bonetto.

Arturo Croci is the founder of Italy’s leading horticultural business magazine, Flortecnica, a walking encyclopedia of Italian horticulture and, as a columnist, regularly contributes to FloraCulture International.