GREEN CAREERS
It’s been quite a journey for passionate rose enthusiast Jan Barnett and her family, but at last Amoré Roses are all set to bring to New Zealand’s gardeners the best of rose breeding from around the world.
Romancing the rose
It’s funny how a single conversation can change your destiny. It was a disgruntled breeder lamenting how hard it was to get the latest roses into New Zealand that set the Barnett family on a course that has resulted in a boutique family-run nursery being established on the outskirts of Hamilton. Amoré Roses aims to “revolutionalise the rose market with easy to work with, compact roses.”
Jan Barnett has had a long connection with roses. Her grandfather was Allan G. Scott MBE, renowned rose authority, writing well into his nineties. Jan herself is a Life Member of the Waikato Rose Society, is an exhibitor and international rose judge, and travels extensively following her passion. However, says Jan “Much of this has had to take a back seat now I am so busy with the nursery, which I absolutely love. How many people get an opportunity like this?”
In order to establish Amoré Roses, Jan and her husband Paul sold the family home of 36 years and abandoned all plans for retirement. NZ rose breeder Sam McGredy advised Jan, “Tell Paul to keep his day job!” She was
starting from scratch in an industry where nurseries tend to stay in one family for two or three generations.
Nine years later Jan is producing her first roses for the New Zealand market. She works with world leading rose breeders from Australia, Belgium, Germany, France, Netherlands, Canada, Ireland and America. Internationally, rose growing is still a male dominated industry but Amoré Roses is run by three women; Jan and her daughters Briony and Mel. In Europe ‘Jan’ is a man’s name so in the Amoré World Jan is known as ‘Janette’.
Jan considers the real heroes of the business to be the roses themselves, bred for superior disease resistance as well as fragrance, beauty and flowering performance. Sourced from the world’s top breeding programmes, the roses are then carefully trialled in Amoré’s extensive gardens. “In the northern hemisphere you can’t buy sprays,” explains Jan. “So the roses are bred to be as disease resistant as possible.” Jan receives her trial roses at the same time as the European nurseries. “So we really are
up with the play in New Zealand now.”
Asked to give us a few hints on good roses to look out for this season, Jan suggests the compact Bambina rose® ‘Smart & Sassy®’ which is only 50cm tall yet has large scented flowers on disease resistant foliage. Silvery pink rose ‘William PJ McCarthy’ is also compact, with a mild fragrance.
If perfume is your priority, Jan believes it’s hard to go past ‘MagnifiScent’, which was judged by public vote as the most fragrant rose at the 2017 Pacific Rose Bowl Festival in Hamilton. Coming up this spring, ‘Perfumed Kiss’ is a beautiful plumlavender rose to add to your wish list, another a compact rose perfect for smaller gardens and highly scented.
Where a taller rose is called for, Australian-bred ‘Tahlia’ produces masses of high pointed hybrid tea style roses in glowing deep rose-pink with a creamy centre and yellow reverse petals.
There are simply too many beautiful Amoré roses to list here. Visit www.amoreroses.co.nz to see more.