Anne’s family had always been wealthy. Her Father had been a well-known Botanist in his youth. He had helped to pioneer certain ideas within the botanical community, which created a much broader scope with which to recognize specific variations within each species.
He spent his later years designing gardens in urban areas in the States and Internationally, creating quite a name for himself.
As a child and into her teens she would join him in his green house while he worked. She would watch him closely as he cross-pollinated roses or grafted trees. He was never casual about the tasks he performed and treated even the simple act of watering as a science.
He never referred to flowers as "flowers" or trees as "trees". He insisted that each specimen be called by its proper name. Even when Anne was a small girl,whenever she asked her father what something was, the way that children do, he was specific and told her in scientific terms. Plants were always referred to by their Latin names; such as Rosa rugosa etc.
“Shakespeare’s quote regarding the rose is foolish nonsense! ‘A rose by any other name’ and so forth…indeed!”
He once told her,
“Roses may smell similarly but they behave nothing like one another and deserve to be individually recognized. After all, if God intended for us to refer to every Rose simply as "Rose", he would not have created so many different varieties now would he?"
And on he continued, as he always did, creating philosophy out of science.
"Since Eden Anne, it has been mans job to discover and name the creations of God. Thereby honoring his creations by recognizing their distinguishing features, the very features that God himself has seen fit to include within their nature. So one can either regard it as an annoyance or an honor to call a rose by it’s proper name, it matters not to me Anne, but in this house we, in reverence to God himself we shall never simply call a rose a rose…no matter how sweet its fragrance.”
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