A man who ROSE to the occasion

David Austin changed the way we garden with his glorious roses – now his son is making sure his legacy flourishes

There aren’t many cases where a plant breeder can be considered a revolutionary, but David Austin, who died in December, undoubtedly changed the way we garden. If you grow roses, the chances are that at least one of them will have been bred by the man known to his employees as ‘Mr A’.

For all their many charms, roses can be tricky. They are often beset with black spot, they need regular feeding, and for the nine months of the year when they’re not in flower they tend to look rather unexciting. But by combining the charm, romance and fragrance of old-fashioned roses with the repeat-flowering qualities and disease resistance of modern roses, David Austin made us fall in love with them all over again. Officially called English Roses, they are known the world over as David Austin roses.

Everyone has their own favourite: perhaps the wonderfully perfumed ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, or yellow ‘Graham Thomas’, or glowing apricot ‘Sweet Juliet’, or my own favourite, the soft orange ‘Crown Princess Margareta’. Two years ago, when I last met David Austin, I asked him if he had yet created the perfect rose. ‘ No!’ he exclaimed. ‘Not even close.’ But after some persuasion he did admit that of all the roses he had bred, he thought the best so far was pink ‘Olivia Rose Austin’, named after his granddaughter.

David Austin’s fascination with rose breeding began as a teenager, when his sister gave him a book on roses. He thought that modern roses like hybrid teas and f loribundas lacked the sumptuous beauty and the gorgeous scent of gallicas, albas and damask roses, whose great drawback is that they only produce one flush of flowers a year. It took decades of experimentation before he launched his first rose, the pink climber ‘Constance Spry’, which went on the market in 1961. More than 230 more varieties of roman- tic, highly scented and repeat-flowering roses followed.

Although he was 92 when he died, David Austin was passionate about rose breeding until the very end. He was still heavily involved in the company, which is a great British success story: it employs 200 staff at its headquarters at Albrighton in Shropshire and 225 internationally; two million of its roses are sold every year around the world.

For the past 25 years his son, David Jr, has been at his side, working as managing director of the business. ‘I started out in the company as a 15-year- old, working in the fields where the roses are grown,’ recalls David, who’s now 60. ‘It was a very rose-centred environment but that seemed normal to me. It’s only when I look back on it that I realise I lived through an amazing time.’

Did father and son ever disagree about roses? ‘I think we had one argument in 25 years,’ David says. ‘I had total respect for my father when it came to roses; it was his passion and he knew a great deal more than I did, but his greatest wish was for his work to continue so he wanted me to get involved and make decisions.’ More recently, David Jr’s son Richard, 33, has also joined the company.

Producing a new rose is a painstaking process, stretching over seven years. It starts with 175,000 rose seeds, each with their own unique DNA; over the years the roses are grown in trial fields and whittled down until just two or three varieties remain that are deemed good enough to go on sale. The roses are only given a name a few months before they’re launched commercially.

David is adamant that his father’s work will continue and the company will not rest on its laurels; two new roses will be unveiled at the Chelsea Flower Show this year. ‘The possibilities for new roses are endless and there is always the potential to improve even the most beautiful rose,’ he says. ‘ There is so much more that can be done.’

David (centre) with his grandson Richard (left) and son David Jr