Before a Rose Has a Name: The Years Behind a New Variety
The first time I met a rose breeder was in 2010.
I was visiting Meilland and Delbard in France. Roses were already very much part of my life, but that trip changed the way I looked at them.
Until then, I had mostly known the finished creation: the rose with the beautiful name, the unusual colour, the perfume that makes you lean closer, the perfectly formed bloom, or the climbing rose capable of transforming a wall or an arch.
What I had never really understood was everything that happened before that rose reached us.
Walking through the enormous Meilland fields near Lyon, I learned something that genuinely surprised me. I was told that creating a new garden rose could take around nine years.
Today, breeding programmes vary, and the journey can take around a decade or even longer. But that number stayed with me.
Nine years.
Nine years between an idea in a breeder’s mind and the moment when you or I may finally choose that rose for our garden.
And those years do not begin with a flower. They begin with a question.
Every new rose starts with an objective.
Perhaps the breeder is searching for a colour that is particularly rare or difficult to achieve. Perhaps the aim is an exceptional fragrance, a distinctive flower form, unusually generous flowering, stronger disease resistance, greater hardiness or better garden performance.
Sometimes the goal is to bring several of these qualities together.
It begins with the parents
Once the objective is clear, another difficult question follows: Which roses should become the parents?
Selecting the parents is a piece of research in itself. Breeders build their knowledge over many years, learning which characteristics are carried through particular lines and which combinations may have the potential to move them closer to what they are trying to achieve.
But nature does not work to a specification sheet.
Two carefully chosen parents do not simply produce the perfect child. Far from it.
Thousands of possibilities
The selected roses are crossed by hand. Pollen from one parent is transferred to another. If the pollination is successful, rose hips develop and, inside them, seeds begin to form.
Every seed represents a new genetic possibility.
I like to think of it in the same way we think about children in a family. They may share the same parents, but each inherits a different combination of characteristics.
Roses are no different.
This is why breeders work with enormous numbers of crosses and seedlings. They do not know which seedling, if any, will carry the combination they are looking for.
One may produce a wonderful flower but grow on a weak plant. Another may have a fascinating colour but insufficient disease resistance. One may look extremely promising in its first year and disappoint later.
And many simply do not offer enough that is new, distinctive or reliable to justify continuing with them.
So the breeder selects. And selects again.
Thousands become hundreds. Hundreds become dozens. Dozens may become only a handful.
And sometimes, after a huge amount of work, none of them are good enough.
Then the work begins again.
That is something we rarely think about when we admire a newly introduced rose.
Finding a beautiful rose is only the beginning
Before that visit, I think I assumed that once the breeder found a beautiful new flower, the hard part was almost over.
In reality, it is just the beginning of another long stage.
A beautiful flower is not enough.
A garden rose has to prove that it can actually live in a garden.
The most promising selections therefore enter years of further trials.
Does the plant remain healthy? How does it grow? Does it flower again? Does it perform consistently from one season to another?
How does it respond to disease? What happens during difficult weather? How does it cope with heat, cold, rain and conditions that are far from ideal?
The breeder keeps asking questions.
And the rose has to keep answering them.
One of my clearest memories from that trip is of walking beside an area that, at first glance, looked almost abandoned.
There were weeds. The roses did not look pampered. It was nothing like the immaculate display gardens we normally associate with famous rose houses.
For a moment, I wondered why nobody seemed to be taking care of them.
Then I understood. That was precisely the point.
These roses were being tested.
The breeders needed to see what the plants would do when life was not made easy for them.
Would they remain healthy? Would they continue to grow? Which varieties would cope naturally? Which would begin to struggle?
A trial field is not a show garden.
Its job is not to make every rose look beautiful. Its job is to reveal the truth about the plant.
That was probably the biggest “wow” moment of the entire visit for me.
The roses were not being neglected because nobody cared.
They were being observed because somebody cared enough to find out what they were really capable of.
Promising selections may also be tested in different regions and climates. A rose that performs well in one protected location has only answered part of the question.
Breeders need to understand how it behaves when temperatures, rainfall, disease pressure and growing conditions change.
Only after years of observation does a variety begin to prove that it deserves to move forward.
We should not expect everything from one rose
Learning about this process changed something else in the way I think about roses.
We gardeners sometimes ask for everything.
We want an extraordinary colour, a powerful fragrance, perfect flower form, exceptional disease resistance, constant flowering, great winter hardiness and strong growth — but not too strong.
We would also like abundant blooms, preferably large enough to cut for the house.
And, ideally, very little effort from us.
Nature rarely gives us every desirable characteristic at its maximum in one plant.
Breeding is often the art of finding the right balance.
A rose with an exceptionally unusual colour may not be the strongest variety in every other respect. A rose capable of producing a breathtaking first flush may flower less abundantly later in the season.
Another may have a more familiar colour but compensate with excellent health and reliability. And another may deserve its place in the garden for one unforgettable quality: its fragrance.
This does not necessarily make one rose better and another worse.
It makes them different.
We each have our strengths. None of us is perfect.
Part of choosing a rose well is understanding which qualities matter most to us and appreciating each variety for what it does particularly well.
What I remember most is the people
Years later, there is another part of those visits that has stayed with me just as strongly as the technical process.
The people themselves.
It is difficult to spend time around rose breeders without noticing how passionate they are about what they do.
This never felt to me like a profession people had simply chosen because it paid the bills.
You could feel their enthusiasm.
They could spend the entire day walking with you through fields, research areas and trial plots.
They would explain what they were observing, what they hoped to improve, why one apparently tiny characteristic mattered and why another plant had to be rejected.
And then, after walking past thousands upon thousands of plants, they might proudly show you the two varieties they had finally managed to produce.
Two.
After countless crosses, seedlings, trials and disappointments.
When you first hear that, it is difficult to comprehend.
So much land. So much knowledge. So many plants. So many years.
And perhaps only one or two varieties at the end make the breeder stop and say those words.
I still remember the pride with which those roses were shown to us. Not the pride of somebody presenting another product, but the pride of somebody showing you something they had created.
Once you understand what came before, that pride makes complete sense.
Before the beautiful name comes a code
There is something else about the process that I find fascinating.
For much of its development, the rose does not yet have the beautiful name we eventually recognise from a catalogue or plant label.
It may simply be a seedling, a selection or a code.
The plant has to prove itself before the story surrounding it begins.
Only much later, when a breeder decides that the variety is worthy of introduction, does it receive the identity under which gardeners will eventually know it.
We may meet it years afterwards as Pierre de Ronsard, Papa Meilland or another name that becomes familiar to rose lovers around the world.
For us, the name is often where our relationship with the rose begins.
For the breeder, it comes after years of work that we never saw.
Why this work deserves to be respected
Once I understood what goes into creating a rose, I began to see breeder rights and licensing very differently.
Terms such as protected variety, plant breeders’ rights or licence can sound rather legal or commercial.
But behind them is something very human.
Someone had an idea. Someone believed a better or different rose was possible.
Teams made crosses. They raised seedlings. They rejected thousands of plants. They continued working with the few that showed promise.
They tested them. They waited. They watched them through season after season.
Land, research, people, specialist knowledge and considerable investment all went into the process.
And years passed before anyone could know whether all that work would result in a rose good enough to introduce.
That creation has value.
Just as we respect the work of an author, an artist or a designer, I believe we should respect the people who create new plants.
For protected varieties, working through authorised channels is part of recognising the work of the breeder who created them.
For us, this is not simply about complying with a rule. It is about respect.
Respect for the knowledge.
Respect for the investment.
Respect for the years of unsuccessful attempts nobody ever sees.
And, above all, respect for the passion behind the rose.
The next time you choose a rose
The next time you look at a new variety, perhaps pause for a moment before asking whether it has everything on your wish list.
Look instead at what makes it special.
Perhaps somebody spent years trying to achieve that particular shade.
Perhaps fragrance was the quality they refused to compromise on.
Perhaps the real achievement is something less immediately dramatic: strong health, repeat flowering or the ability to cope reliably with difficult conditions.
Remember that the rose in front of you was once one small seedling among thousands.
Someone noticed it. Someone believed it was worth pursuing.
They selected it. They tested it. They waited.
They watched it through season after season.
And eventually, after around a decade — sometimes longer — it received a name and found its way into our gardens.
I have never looked at a rose in quite the same way since that visit in 2010.
Perhaps now you won’t either.
If Pierre de Ronsard caught your eye while reading this story, you may also enjoy The Right Rose in the Wrong Place: What Pierre de Ronsard Taught Me .
The breeder’s long journey may be complete, but a new one begins in your garden. Our Rose Care Guides bring together practical advice on planting, watering, feeding and seasonal care.