How Amazing Were the Roses at Oprah’s Home While Interviewing Adele
By Jill Brooke
Who couldn’t notice the magnificent white roses enveloping Adele while being interviewed at Oprah’s Montecito, California home?
I was swooning over them. Turns out that over 10 million people also saw this beautiful garden who tuned into the interview.
Oprah shared that she matched her cream-white outfit to her favorite rose. Lucky for her Adele also chose to wear a white pantsuit resulting in the two superstars looking angelic with a halo of sumptuous roses around them.
To create this paradise, Winfrey hired master rosarian Dan Bifano, who also created gardens for singer Barbra Streisand and Tom Ford. Winfrey often does interviews under this magnificent arch of Sambreuil roses that are also scented with jasmine, including her tell-all with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Climbing Sambreuil is one of her favorite roses though there are 600 rosebushes on her 65-acre property. However, Bifano has said that “Oprah likes the Brass Band rose because there’s a hint of orange in it.”
He likes those flowers as well because “it blooms a lot and is a vigorous grower.” Bifano told Veranda Magazine that he only uses modern roses and likes flowers from Tom Carruth, Christian Beddard, and the House of Meilland. Furthermore, he prefers a fertilizer that combines alfalfa. meal, chicken manure, worm castings, cottonseed meal and fish meal to offer well-rounded nutrition in the spring and fall to create these intoxicating blooms.
Winfrey’s rose gardens also consist of Pandora roses, peachy Bronze Star, Heaven on Earth in blushing pinks, and bronze and lavender Distant Drums, Yves Piaget and a red Marilyn Monroe. Of course, there are a variety of other magnificent flowers on her property, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, including Sunset Celebration roses as well as hydrangeas, lilies and dahlias. She even helped develop a new rose breed, called, Legends. Certainly an apt name for the journalist and philanthropist.
It is her happy place, she says. And for others too. In fact, the daughter of Oprah’s best friend Gayle King got married there.
When anyone gets to hear Oprah say, “Welcome to my rose garden,” they are indeed getting a treat.
Jill Brooke is a former CNN correspondent, Post columnist and editor-in-chief of Avenue and Travel Savvy magazine. She is an author and the editorial director of FPD and floral editor for aspire design and home magazine and contributor to Florists Review magazine.
Photo Credit: Oprah, Veranda Magazine