Club comes up smelling of roses
AT the latest meeting of Bollington Horticultural Society, Kate from Fryer’s Roses in Knutsford explained the incredible amount of time and labour-intensive work that goes into growing rose plants and discovering new varieties.
Pauline Pedlary, from the group, explained: “Fryers has been a family business from 1912 and exports roses worldwide, and Kate has worked there for 23 years. She has produced a sweetsmelling, red rose variety called ‘Claret’ which is now grown commercially.
“Kate demonstrated how pollen has to be collected from thousands of flowers, labelled and then individually dabbed on thousands more different flowers with a small paintbrush. This produces seeds which may flower after about a year. These flowers produce their own seeds in their rosehips. The most promising are grown on, then their buds are grafted on to root stock, which also are grown from twigs with a root at the nursery.
“Budding is very specialised work and budders are paid on their success rate.This explains why rose plants are so expensive. Kate said bare-root plants are cheaper and usually as successful as potted plants. The reason most roses fail is because of lack of water. Roses are very thirsty plants and need more water than just rain.”
The next talk is on coppicing on Friday, September 16 at Bollington Community Centre at 7.30pm.