Puddin Clarke Centennial Garden
The Rice campus has always been lauded for its beautiful landscaping, and in fact the entire campus comprises the Lynn R. Lowrey Arboretum. For the university's centennial, in 2012, the arboretum committee proposed that a rose garden be planted, reminiscent of the roses that Mary Ellen Hale Lovett, wife of Rice's first president Edgar Odell Lovett, cultivated on the campus in the earliest years of the Rice Institute. When alumnus Robert Clarke '63 heard of the project, he offered to fund it in memory of his wife, Jean Barrow Talbert "Puddin" Clarke. The distinctive pink Old Blush roses, a China hybrid, were particular favorites of the garden's honoree.