Fifteen years ago, the Victoria State Rose Garden’s southern boundary was a fenceline running from the small gate in the fence between the Mansion and the Garden, through what is now the centre of the Leaf, to the double gates leading to Parks reserve.
Stage Two of the Garden was approved in 2000 and work was started in setting out the layout of the Leaf and Bud. It was fortunate that Mr James Priestly was still fit enough to assist in this setting out so as to see his dream coming true.
As this effort was coming to fruition during the Australia Bicentennial celebrations, a plan was formed to stock the 50 beds of the Leaf with Australian roses. A Centenary of Federation Grant was successfully applied for to complete the task.
The selection criteria was that as far as possible, roses would be selected on the basis of :
Year of introduction – to be from 1901 to 2001
From as many states of origin as possible
From as many Australian breeders as possible.
A small team was set up to select and source the roses. Not an easy task, as many Australian roses have not remained popular. For example, in 2000, from a list of over 600 known Australian roses bred, over half of them were no longer available. It gets worse – of about 50 new varieties introduced each year in Australia, only about 10 per cent are still on the market five years later. AND all of our rose breeders are amateurs. Even our most prolific breeder, Alister Clark, released his roses through state rose societies, so that he did not lose his amateur status as an exhibitor.
Also, many roses with Australian names are in fact bred overseas and renamed for our market. But the task of selection was a lot of fun, particularly sourcing the roses.
Our earliest rose is Penelope Tea, bred by John Williams of Queensland in 1906. Six women are represented – Olive Fitzhardinge of NSW; Marguerite Parkes of NSW; Myrtle Robertson of NSW; Connie Ryan of WA; Lillia Wetherley of Tas; and, Sister Mary Xavier of Tas.
New South Wales was represented by Eric Welsh, Frank Riethmuller; Queensland by Fred Armbrust, John Williams and Eric Long; South Australia by George Thomson; Tasmania by R. Watson; Victoria by Alister Clark, Ron Bell, Bill Allender, Jim Priestly, Ian Spriggs, Bruce Brundrett, George Dawson, and Laurie Newman; West Australia by Peter Gibson.
We never did find a breeder in the Northern Territory.
