Kindly Light

Hybrid Tea flowers of perfect form in white with lovely touches of soft pink. This is a tribute to a great horticulturist of West Bengal, Swami Vinayananda of the Ramakrishna Mission, who after the serving the Mission in different capacities in its various branches, finally, due to ill health, settled in the Mission’s Arogya Mandir ( House of Health ) – a kind of senior monks’ residence, and a hospice, situated in the Mission’s headquarters in the suburb of Belur, near Kolkata, on the banks of the River Hooghly ( a tributary of the River Ganges). Swami Vinayananda who passed away in early 2015, was a rose breeder, a researcher on the rose species, R.clinophylla, and also a prolific writer in English and Bengali. He has written many articles for our various Indian Rose Annuals, mostly on the subject of roses in the Bengal region of eastern India, from where he hailed, and was most knowledgeable. He was also very interested in the dahlia flower, hybridizing and releasing many cultivars and writing a definitive book on the dahlias of India. He started the Dahlia Society of India.
Our visits to Kolkata would be incomplete till we had visited him in the Belur Math ( ‘Math’ means ‘ashram’ – the abode of monks) and spent many pleasurable hours discussing and exchanging views on roses, dahlias and other plants.
‘Kindly Light’ the other name for this hybrid gigantea with its bushy growth and healthy foliage, is from the hymn, ‘Lead, Kindly Light’. We have always felt that the words are very evocative and soothing.