As well as being Margaret's favourite floral motif throughout her life, the rose has been described in New Zealand gardening history as the plant that was held 'in the greatest esteem in the earliest decades of this century'. It enjoyed enormous prestige throughout the country and especially in Christchurch, which took an early lead in nineteenth-century rose growing. (This may have been related to the loyalty the city felt towards its English origins).

p 81 Flowers into Landscape Margaret Stoddart 1865 - 1934, Julie King, Hazard Press,1997