As I said in the similar message on the "Rose" forum; Dr. Griffith Buck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Griffith Buck blog on Garden Musings

When we sorted the rose list by hybridizer, the odd thing that came out was that the top hybridizer, by far, was God. We have more species roses than from any other source by a long shot. Second is probably Svedja. Everything else is onesies-twosies.

Several Paul Barden what a collection of great roses my personal favorite is Treasure Trail...IMHO one of the best roses of the last 20 years then theres Tom Carruth...& I guess my favoite is Dominique Massad some of his roses are sold in the US but check out some of his beauties. I Have Dan Poncet & Paul Bocuse I used to have Versigny all quite beautiful there are 2 I wish were sold in the US. Jadins de Babylone (yum) &
Belle d'Espinouse

Here is a link that might be useful: Dominique Massad

If I'm allowed to choose someone who's been dead for 145 years, I'd pick Jean-Pierre Vibert. He gave us Sidonie, Gloire des Rosomanes, Ipsilante, Crested Moss, Ispahan, La Ville de Bruxelles, Aimable Rouge, (very possibly) Portland from Glendora, and dozens more I'm leaving out. I'm not sure that anyone will ever be able to top that.

My OGRs aren't old enough to have a favorite, but if I had to chose it would be 'Found' ;-)

That said, since I'm a jack of all trades, master of none kind of gal, I've unconsciously or purposefully, take your pick, collected just over 100 (ack! I actually said it!!!) of, I think, a potpourri of not just types, but also a respectable variety of hybridizers. In this way I enjoy another aspect of rose history...

Paul Barden, Boerner, Brownell, Cant, Clark, Coquereau, Dauvesse/Whilhelm, Desprez, Dubreuil, Ducher, Geduldig, Geschwind, Lambert, Harkness, Holmes, Kluis, Kordes, Kordes, Laffay, Lambert, Lammerts, Lens, McGredy, G & P Nabonnand, Pemberton, Rambaux, Schwartz, Tantau, Pam Temple, Verdier, Wheatcroft Bros., Worriner.

And all thanks to the fabulous mom & pop rose nurseries that have made them available. I hope those that remain will be able to thrive.

Almost Everything from the Great Family Guillot Jean Baptiste and Pierre and now Dominique Massad. So many great and famous roses going back for nearly 200 years.

Paul Barden, Tom Carruth,Kim Rupert, Ralph Moore, Vira Viraraghavan, Jim Sproul would be my top modern choices, off of the top of my head. Forgetting a few.

lagomorphmom has a great list as well.

I like the roses of many breeders, but my particular favorites would have to be Ralph Moore, Mattias Tantau, pere et fils, and Francois Lacharme. Now that I live in zone 5, cold and wet, I am not sure how many of Mr. Moore's roses I could grow. Shadow Dancer, the spectacular striped climber which is a seedling of Dortmund, I believe, ought to be possible here.

Pemberton and Paul are my favorites from the oldies, Lens and Kordes from the moderns.

I've answered already on the Rose Forum but other comments here inspire further thoughts. I am writing a piece about the Wizard of Lyon, Pernet-Ducher and the whole of the Ducher and Pernet clan for the Swedish Rose Society quarterly. I think I'll continue my series on famous breeders. I already wrote about Georges Bugnet, Felicitas Svejda and Ping Lim.

Walter van Fleet must have been an interesting person but I know too little about him and must do some more research before I can write about him. I grow his American Pillar, Dr. E.M. Mills and Ruskin.

Not a particular breeder but the almost unknown breeders in the former East Germany interest me. They were anonymous while they worked for nursery collectives with impossible names such as VEG Dresden (Volkseigenes Gut) and GPG Roter Oktober in Bad Langensalza (G�rtnerische Produktionsgenossenschaft). Their roses are still grown by a few now private nurseries in east Germany. They are very good and healthy roses because DDR had no access to foreign pesticides and fungicides so breeders had to pay particular attention to health. I saw many of these roses in the Europa-Rosarium Sangerhausen in 1998, marked by the sad sign: "Roses now propagated by noone". Luckily that is not quite true as Martin Weingart and Uwe Lehnert in Bad Langensalza sell a few varieties. I've ordered the pale lilac HT Salzaquelle for autumn delivery. I already have the yellow shrub Wartburg 77. Both were bred by Hermann Berger. The majority of the DDR roses were red and yellow HTs and floribundas aimed at private gardeners.

Thank you lookin4you, and how could I have forgotten my local modern favorites, Ralph Moore, Kim Rupert, Cliff Orent and Jim Delahanty.

It has always bothered me that Austins were included on this forum. Not that I have anything against Austins -- they have their place among modern roses. Some of them are really nice, and I enjoy growing them. But they are modern roses. I really wish there were an "antique" rose forum that really was that -- antique. The addition of the Austins just dilutes this forum, in my opinion.

interesting answers - not too many old ones though. For the record, Pedro Dot has always been a remarkable hybridiser, and the Paul dynasty will always be included in my fave list. Must agree that Vibert has had an impressive output but, as a confessed species fan, I am pleased to hear mad gallica's response concerning the overwhelming majority of favourites assigned to the species class ( agnostically, witholding God comments).
Moderns: well I have been following Jim Sproul's hybridising exploits along with the remarkable patio rose breeder, Chris Warner and his pal, peter james - this is mainly because i have become extremely keen and interested in hulthemia hybrids.Annoyingly, it is almost impossible to get hold of Buck roses in the UK - a number of those would be on my list in a trice.
And yes, thank goodness for the nurseries without whom none of this would be possible. A shout out for Beales, to my mind a far more knowledgeable rosarian than DA, along with Trevor White, a prolific grower of old roses in Norfolk.
Finally, thinking of both growers and breeders, I have to wonder when own root roses are going to gain any currency here in the UK - for some reason, horticulturists frequently hang on to tradition but I will be growing as many own root roses as possible myself and seeing which roses prosper and thrive, which roses have increased or diminished vigour...and hopefully, making an informed choice about cultivation methods.

I disagree with Mr. Manners, while I do not care that much about Austins per se, but imho the forum would be very tunnel visioned otherwise. When it comes to the modern breeders who work with the OGR gene pool, from my point of view it is a continuation of the same OGR style, rather than slapping a modern rose mark on it, which for some vague reason has to be a taboo.

Malcom Manners is right on. To label this forum Austins and OGR's ia a God Awful insult to the host of great roses that put Austin's to shame. Imagine comparing an Austin with Charles de Mills! Or so many of those wonderful roses that have endured for a hundred years or more. I seriously doubt that any Austin will be around 50 years from now

It's fine to include them but to put them on a par with OGR's by positioning the Austin name first then adding the old roses as if they are incidental. Isn't the purpose of this forum about the old ones not the new just because they look like OGR's. Oh yes several breeders have Austin like looks as do many other "modern" roses.

Well if I would compare Austin with Charles de Mills, poor Charles would loose horribly, since I find him to be rather dull generic purple rose, with no exceptional quality and a drawback of being once bloomer. Tastes differ.

Then again, if you grow only OGR roses, with no companions, no other roses mixed in, then probably the rest is of little interest. For me personally OGR only garden is not really the aim, it is more of picking rose that I like, not really looking at the date when it was bred. Some OGRs make that cut, some moderns, also at some point you start looking at the moderns which are small and go well with your older OGRs, for most OGRs are oversized.

Pedro Dot wins my vote.

I guess we just have to realize and agree that tastes differ. I consider 'Charles de Mills' to be among the most amazingly beautiful of all roses, and I think few if any modern roses approach it. I wish I could grow it.

We do grow a good mix of moderns and OGRs in our college collection. We also grow orchids and magnolias. I like them all. But just as I'd prefer not to discuss orchids in an OGR forum, it seems a bit odd to me that we are forced to include modern roses here, and even weirder, not just any modern roses -- specifically and uniquely the roses of one breeder. And I think that was Campanula's point to start with. I guess you can approach that from two directions -- include more modern breeders' work here, OR omit them all, and deal just with OGRs, a huge subject in its own right.

So we can agree to disagree. I, for one, would much prefer an OGRs-only forum, as well as other fora (which do exist) for modern roses. Why not a specific Austin forum?

Constance Spry has been around for 50 years:-)

Masha

IMHO, there aren't that many posts here and if the forum's focus was limited even more, there would be even FEWER posts... I just don't think that would help keep people posting and conversing with each other. A forum that's too fragmented fails.

as to hybridizers, I have a lot of DAs as that's what got me interested in the old-rose form to begin with. From there I started learning more about "real" OGRs.
I have a lot of different hybridizers represented (about 25 or so diff ones, so I won't list them), very few I have more than one rose from.

But I have a good number from the Kordes family and I have two Pembertons.

I'm very interested in finding out more about Harkness, Ralph Moore and Paul Barden, though. :)

OK, this forum calls itself antique roses - a lovely vague term which can encompass a lot....which is just as well since we discuss roses of all ages, willy nilly...and sometimes, we even talk about other plants. Aimee Kitty is right to point out that being exclusive is not the way forward. Definitions of what an 'antique' rose might be are contentious and limiting. I just think it is odd that Austin roses are given a special category and I have queries about what exactly constitutes a rose class or type, and do 'english' roses have validity as a class of their own.We are knowledge sharers and interested in lots of stuff so having a 'pure' forum would be dull, dull, dull: thankfully, we are all clearly subversives at heart since hardly anyone obeys any sort of rule at all, posting on many subjects including the most ancient of wild roses to roses yet to be born, roses of all classes, Asian and European.

Well, technically speaking for any classification to be valid, it has to be based on same criteria. If you take as criteria lets say what class a rose belongs to (for example galica, alba, tea, multiflora, etc.), then you should make a classification based on that criteria and ignore breeders/timeframe. If a criteria is a time frame that the rose was introduced, then again, old, modern, new is a good criteria, as well as other subtypes, such as English, Romantica and other terms that generally mean a direction in gardening style (which often is time and culture based, since term modern generally is of same origin).

With this classification also is an issue, where you do a cut of modern/OGR - while mostly it is done at La France, it is very artificial really, since it is based on a rose class rather than a style/time frame and mostly draws a difference between garden roses and hybrid teas. Next to HTs however there were always attempts to breed something else and it would be silly to exclude roses bred after La France was introduced, just because they do not make a certain time cut, but otherwise are not much different from same class roses bred before the golden date.

On top of that, most hybrid musks and wichuranas won't even make any cut as OGRs, because they were bred after the modern HTs roses appeared on the market. So you get pretty much stuck with albas, galicas, centifolias and species, plus some chinas, noisettes and teas if you get a bit further and pick different year in same 19th century.

Then there also is a question, for example with rugosas you have an important Latvian breeder D.Rieksta - technically speaking they all are modern roses too, because they were bred in mid 20 century, but rugosa discussion would not ever be complete without mentioning Polareis (bred 1963) or Dagmar Hastrup (bred 1914).

I only mind Austins when a Botanical garden rips out a collection of established OGR's to replace them with Austins. If the rose were duplicated or moved it would'nt be so terrible to me. The loss of Duchess D'Anguleme , Gloire de Mouseuses, Ville de Bruxelles, Madame William Paul, Cristata, Variegatta di Bologna, & more was not soothed by a bed of Austins.

Hmm.
#1. Hybridizer unknown/Found Roses by far.
#2. Mother Nature.
#3. Louis Lens.
#4. Kordes.
If I posted about Louis Lens roses on the modern forum, I'm pretty sure no one would respond.

I don't grow David Austin roses. I do have a couple, but for the most part they require spraying in our area, and I will not spray.

Mr. Manners happens to be Dr. Malcolm Manners. Most of us hold him in high esteem, and appreciate anything he cares to contribute to this forum.

He is an expert whose opinion is often regarded as a "fact".

Sammy

For me what it comes down to is a breeder that selects a rose not only with a pretty face but that also is a good garden plant. Which is why I love Kordes roses. And further they choose roses of all types, sizes, blooming habit, bush shape and flower form. They cover the water front!

malcolm, I am in complete agreement with your opinion Re: Austin's. Perhaps a justification lies in his use of OGRs in breeding to get blooms and fragrance more characteristic of OGRs than of modern h.teas, floribundas, etc. Nevertheless Austin's are moderns, not OGR's.

And to include Austin and exclude say Kordes, seems unfair, because, after all, besides all the stiff, healthy as horses, non-fragrant H.Teas he has given us, he also gave us Scharlachglut and Robusta. So if you include Austin, where do you draw the line?

In the end, I suppose there are very few of us that grow only OGRs and we just can't help mentioning some of the moderns from time to time. As long as the focus remains on OGRs, there is no real harm done. But i'm still bothered by the special mention that Austin gets in this forum. He's produced two or three truly great roses with OGR characteristics, but so have many other hybridizers of moderns.

"I just think it is odd that Austin roses are given a special category"

"Austin" is an excellent word to have on a website for the sake of "clicks" and "hits". It's a magnet for new people, a nugget of gold for some to discover on our Forum. Personally, I love to see the photos and read the discussions, but I might as well live on the moon as far as growing them goes. Like Suzy said, we are rule-breakers, and I think it's because we have no rules in our own gardens. We like what we like and grow what will grow which has become a little more important than the title of the Forum in regard to topics posted. We still love antique roses, but we also love to read what our rose buddies write. I think currently we are more an expansive group of special, caring rose lovers than a restrictive esoteric AND smaller group.

"Why not a specific Austin forum?"

I love you, Dr Manners, but I'm lazy and love one-stop shopping. :))

"If I posted about Louis Lens roses on the modern forum, I'm pretty sure no one would respond."

Correctomundo, Pam. There really is a much broader rose knowledge here.

As to breeders/hybridizers, did anyone mention the Cochets and Laffay who was the breeder of two that I have, Le Vesuve and Princesse de Nassau and dozens of bourbons, mosses, chinas, noisettes, teas & HPs including Coupe de Hebe, Duchesse de Montebello, Great Western, Henry Martin, La Reine, Indigo, Napoleon & William Lobb. I like his style.

Sherry

I've never paid much attention to roses as classified by their breeders, though the latter are an interesting bunch: perhaps this thread may focus my attention on this aspect of roses.

I imagine that all the great hybridizers were or are innovators, but only in some cases has the character of the innovations has captured my attention. I love the Pemberton Hybrid Musks, and admire their creator's vision every time I see them in my garden. The early twentieth century had some notable breeders: Van Fleet, Lambert, Geschwind, that Kordes who created the Fruehlings- roses. These are all breeders from cold climates, most of them German, and perhaps I admire the resolution and imagination with which they attacked the task of breeding roses for their situations; and the contrarian vision that could come up with a rose like 'Fruehlingsgold'.

I think the importance of Austin is that he created and popularized a class of reblooming, large-flowered, fragrant, beautiful SHRUB roses. Other modern breeders have created roses with similar characteristics, but no one on such a scale or achieving such popularity. I think the Austin roses as a group are beautiful and suspect that some of them are still going to be around a century from now; but I absolutely agree that they're not a substitute for old roses. Here in Italy the great majority of the more progressive gardeners seem to have leaped straight from Hybrid Teas to Austins, with hardly a sideways glance toward the old and older roses, and I think it's a great shame. I have a couple of friends who share my passion for Gallicas and their once-flowering kin, but we're a drop in the ocean.

As I've said before, this forum is de facto if not de jure for shrub, rambling, and climbing roses, and the proof is the freedom with which we discuss (as elemire pointed out) Hybrid Musks, Wichuranas, species roses, and others that don't fit in the forum's official categories.

Melissa

Melissa,

Best post I've ever read on this beaten-to-death subject. Thank you.

Best wishes,
Jon

Beaten but not yet down!

Incorrigible curmudgeon!

I know quite well who Malcom Manners is, and have great respect for his knowledge and opinions. I do not agree with him that Austin roses do not belong in the Antiques forum, but disagreeing does not alter my high regard for his knowledge and opinions. Intelligent knowledgeable people do not have to agree on everything.

Austin roses, while blackspot magnets in my climate (as are gallicas and HPs), do utilize a fair amount of OGR genes to get antique-type flower forms and fragrances, so I would allow them here, although the title on the page just says Antique Roses so I don't know what people are talking about when they complain about 'labeling' this forum 'Austins and Antiques'. And I have noticed that Austins are what you might call the 'gateway drug' for OGRs! that's how I got interested in true OGRs, and other people say so too.

Here's a question for you all: do Paul Barden's roses qualify as Antiques or OGRs? If not why not? He would be on my short list of hybridizers whose roses I covet. He is a contemporary hybridizer working with the OGR classes to create new cultivars of OGRs - gallicas etc. Particularly his mosses are what I covet. (I have Treasure Trail too, labrea!) So is it the date of introduction that matters most, or is it the gene pool? Sounds like some of you are strict interpretationists who would disqualify Barden roses on grounds of being too modern even though they are just as much gallica or whatever as anything that appeared before 1867.

I think it would be a very good idea for the knowledgeable rosarian to learn about the different hybridizers! Hybridizers generally have certain criteria they breed for and will produce roses more likely to be similar to each other in respect to those criteria than roses chosen at random. Knowing that a rose is a Kordes rose means something, after all, much more than knowing that it's a pink floribunda. For instance I'm wary of Austins because I know they get blackspot here, and I gravitate towards Bardens because I know he works in my climate and selects for disease resistance.

I also gravitate towards hybrid musks, most of which come from one or two breeders. I know they do well here. So do Kordes roses. Bucks are not widely grown here as we do not get the intense winter cold they are bred to withstand, so I don't think I've ever even seen a Buck rose.

Mariannese, I think your articles on breeders is an excellent idea. I have been doing something along the same lines for my local rose society newsletter, for what are probably the same reasons - introduce people to roses that are not mass-market cultivars, and to the philosophies and goals of hybridizers so they can look for roses more likely to do well for them based on hybridizer rather than by color or class or mass-market producer. I've only run one so far, on a local hybridizer who works with exhibition-form minifloras (Mitchie Moe of Washington State), but I would be very interested if you were willing to share articles. I'm concentrating on contemporary independent hybridizers, whose work may not be available in Sweden, and it sounds like you're concentrating on hybridizers whose work is more widely available.