You'll Want These Roses for Your Garden! Meet the Breeder

Hi, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm. One of my favorite things about doing this channel here is that I get to meet some interesting people from within the industry. This week I got to sit down with Brad Gelbert. Brad Gelbert is a world-famous rose breeder and his breeding has taken a surge in popularity for good reason recently. I got a chance to sit down with him and talk about some of his most notable new varieties. I hope you'll enjoy that conversation. So the first one I wanted to talk to you about is Pink Ruffles because that one has made a huge slash online. Yeah, yeah, it's been huge. So Pink Ruffles is a seedling we bred with a Cordes rose, crossed it with, we have a lot of ruffled roses in our breeding line because I've always liked ruffled roses. So we just used the seedling we crossed with this rose called Sunny Sky, came up with this very ruffled rose and I almost threw it out because I don't like what it's doing in the weather but it happened to be a wet summer. So I kept it. We sent budwood off to backers who buzzed the plants up. They sent it back to us. We saw it in the pots for the first time just this year and it was sensational. Yeah, oh my goodness, this is good. So we brought it up. Customers went crazy for it. We photographed it, did some videos and I still thought it's nice but the response was unbelievable and everybody told us when can we buy it, when can we get it. So the bigger growers in the U.S. all inquired about it and it's been all over the place. So it's scented, it blooms in big sprays of heavily ruffled blooms that are a nice pink color. They hold the foliage, they hold the stem and it's lasting as a cut flower. So it was one of those that when I made the plan, I had no idea that I was going to come up with this rose like this. I thought I would come up with a hybrid tea rose. This is more of a floribunda that had some ruffled edges. So you never know what you're going to get. Love those ruffled edges. That's one of my favorite flower forms. I love the old climber polka just because of the ruffled edges. Yeah, polka is great for that. Another one of your ruffled ones is Eliza. Am I pronouncing that right? Yeah, Eliza. So Eliza is a girl that married a good friend of mine. I've known the family forever. I gifted it as their wedding gift, the rose naming. We called it Eliza and it sold okay for the first couple years and then this ruffled roses became more and more popular. It lasts as a cut flower, changes colors and as it opens it gets more and more ruffles. Somebody commented online about it that its ruffles have ruffles and then it became a sensation. So we know it was one of the first ones to sell out whenever it's offered by the U.S. nurseries. Our partners that we work with in the U.S. are now multiplying that one like crazy. It's healthy. It's a cutting rose. It's fragrant. It just seems to, it's kind of like polka in a hybrid tea. So a similar color scheme, same bloom and really photogenic and it seems to me like the softer colors are in. So those have been and I've always liked the softer colors versus hard reds and things like that. So it's working for us. Well, speaking of a hard red, I saw here last year our anniversary, which is a strong red and you stunned me with how glossy and beautiful the foliage is on this plant. Was that something you were looking for when you bred? Well yeah, I'm a foliage guy so I like roses with nice foliage. Absolutely. And when I'm judging them, picking them out, even from the little seedling stage, I look at the leaves first before the bloom. It was Ralph Moore that told me, breed the plant, breed the foliage and put a pretty face on it. And he was the originator of the modern miniature rose. So that rose came along, we crossed with a Cordes rose that had fantastic foliage. We crossed it with a beautiful fragrant hybrid tea that had nice foliage and that rose was born and I knew from day one the foliage was sensational. So it's done well for us, really popular. It has another name in Europe, other parts of the world, they call it as good as it gets. And it got that name because my agent was walking through the fields and he became my agent, he saw the rose, he goes, that's it, that's as good as it gets in roses. And it was based on the foliage and I've never seen a rose, our customers that buy it, when I see reviews online, they comment both on the habit, the color of it, because it'll turn this plum color in some weathers, but the shine, the gloss, it looks almost artificial. Wow, that is high praise. Can you talk to me about William P.J. McCarthy? Sure, William P.J. McCarthy is a good friend of mine, great gardener, he has thousands of roses, thousands of plants in his garden and I wanted to honor him with a rose naming. So it was a shrub rose, we bred years and years ago and we crossed a rose, it was called New Dawn, so you know, the old climber with a modern hybrid tea and somebody told me, you should never make those crosses and I thought, I'm going to try and see what happens and I always like to do what they say you shouldn't do. And we came up with this really tough, just beautiful pink shrub, grows like a weed from cuttings, nice foliage, healthy, hardy and it gives you almost like a small peony bloom, it has this cupped form to the flower and I think it's really popular because of the color, but also the freedom of bloom, lots of blooms, you could run over it with a lawnmower, it's going to come up, it's going to bloom again. So it's a worthy rose and the name for a good friend of mine. And a great guy. Yeah, great guy, absolutely. Liberty. Liberty, that's another rose I did with Bill McCarthy, so it was a commission naming and he saw the rose and it looks like a poppy and he's very big on the Canadian forces, people that have served, he wanted to do a rose that honored them. My grandfather had been through World War II and we came up with the shrub rose, so it has that bit of the look of that famous knockout rose, but the Canadian version of it. Oh, that's great. Now, can you tell me, I don't think it's, you mentioned it's not widely available now, but Loretta Lynn Van Leer. Sure, so we were approached many years ago when Loretta Lynn was going to have her 50th Grammy tribute and it was a phone call from Sony Music and they knew me as a rose breeder and I thought the phone call was a joke at first and asked if I knew who she was. I said, yeah, absolutely. She has the same name as my mother and they said, we'd like to name a rose and we want something peachy that has a lot of ruffles and because she liked ruffled dresses and I said, yeah, we actually have one. I sent them a photo of it and I would say, they said, yeah, that's great. How much do you want for it? And a few days later, I heard a message on my answering machine from Loretta Lynn saying, thank you so much. I love the rose that you're going to name for me. And I wanted to save the message, of course, to play to everybody and I accidentally hit a rose. So it was gone. So I'm the only one that ever heard the message. I did get a fax from her though with her signature on it. That's consolation, I guess. We knew it was an early rose. We used it in our breeding program. It's not commonly available anymore. It's still a really nice little rose and we bred some other ones that I think are sort of improvements on that. But for people who collect, it's the collector's rose. So if somebody wanted something like Loretta Lynn, they would have to find somebody that has a plant and do some cuttings. Perfect. And if they want something like it. Oh, like it? Yeah. So we bred one that we feel has better foliage, more fragrance, the same peachy ruffled and it's called Renna's Radiance. Okay. And we just sent Budwood off. We have introduced it before. We did lost, uh, well, the grower wasn't growing plants anymore. Now they're back growing our stuff and it's with heirloom roses in the U.S. So it would become much more mainstream again. Perfect. That's a big grower. So they may be able to get that one in the U.S. Yeah. Yeah. They'll be able to get that one. I think that one will be released by them over the next few years. The heirloom has probably the biggest collection of all of my, my roses. I think they're up to 70 or 80 of them now. Oh, that's wonderful. Um, how about Beyond Fabulous? Beyond Fabulous, great rose. Uh, it's a yellow one that we bred. Uh, there's, they call the rose that's known as Julia Child absolutely fabulous in England. And so when my agent there tried it, he said, you know, I think it's one better than that one. I said, one better. Can we call it Beyond Fabulous? It's a little bit cheeky, but, and, um, so we've started that it's in production. It's a great yellow. It has those ruffles. It changes the shades of yellow. And I like a rose that has character, something a little bit different, doesn't stay the same. So from the beginning of the season or the beginning of the bloom to the end of the bloom, you'll see the difference in it. So it's a good one. And if people can find it, I would buy that for a nice yellow floribunda and tons of bloom, great, healthy foliage. A friend of mine on the Island, uh, John Matheson that's grown roses for years, put it in his yellow bed and said it was the best yellow he's ever grown in his life. So I recently did a video on black roses or dark colored roses. And I noticed in your reading, you had black lace, which wouldn't be a black rose, but it does get darker edges, does get darker edges. So we wanted to breed some good red roses and, um, the, and they haven't been selling huge, but the darker, the black reds are interesting. So we came up with black lace. We sent it to the Canadian growers. Everybody turned it down. We sent it. They just didn't like it. Didn't want to go for it. And we had the original plant here. It did go to New Zealand where it won best hybrid tea and trial. And it's very popular with them. So now we have that original plant with heirloom roses. So it'll likely be in production as an only plant. I think it's amazing how something might not make it its first time out, like great breeding and people just don't catch it. They well, because remember the growers are looking for very specific things when they're looking in a big grower's field and they might go through and it's a rainy day and they see it on a rainy day and it's not looking so good, um, or they might have enough reds and they don't want to introduce another red. And also your name as a breeder has to develop so that they pay maybe a little bit more attention to your work than they have in the past. Well, you've got a reputation now. A little bit of one. Yeah. I think so. Take it a few years to get there. Yeah. 36 years of it. Yeah. But you don't want, I was talking to Phillip Harkness, they're 146 years in rose breeding. So I'm a baby. I guess that's true. Perfumed kiss. Tell me about that one. Yeah. Great one. So it was a cross between a highly fragrant rose, a perfume kiss. We did the same when we did our anniversary rose. So we, we crossed it with a patio rose called sensational that had fantastic lavender fragrance. And I love fragrant roses. So it's a midsize bloom blooms more like a floribunda has great foliage. It's won fragrance awards, really popular in New Zealand. It was kind of turned down again, low by the Canadian growers, but now they're scrambling to buy it and grow it. It's down with heirloom roses in the U S so people can buy that mainstream. Now it's, it is listed on their catalog and we get good reviews. If you're collecting fragrant roses, I wouldn't say it's most black spot resistant rose we've bred, but for fragrance, 10 out of 10. Perfect. Tell me about the Dylan rose. Dylan rose is hands down the most successful one so far. And I'm proud of that one. It's a baby pink with a perfect plant habit, highly resistant to black spot and mildew. When we read the reviews online and every rose breeder told me, do not read reviews of your roses because you know, we take it so personally if somebody doesn't like it. But they all say easy rose to grow, beautiful rose. It lasts as a cutting rose and you know how floribundas tend to be a bit of a quick bloomer. The blooms where you can cut the spray and bring them in the house and they last forever. And it will be a light pink to sometimes a little bit peachy depending on the climate you're going to. So it's been really popular and it's commonly available now, although they sell out quickly. So it was the first rose to sell out when Lakeview Roses announced their store. It'll be with Heirloom Roses, I think next year they'll be listing at something like that. It might be hard to get for a while, but very worth the wait. Yeah, it's worth the wait. Awesome. Can we finish off with one I've seen on social media recently called Double Amber? Double Amber. Yeah, that's one that I didn't like and I sent it to, so you know, I liked it enough to send it on. I thought, oh, that's okay. So I sent it to Backer Nursery, who's the grower in Canada. And they were like, wow, this is a great rose. We love it. So I thought, oh, I better take another look at it because, you know, they're experienced in picking out roses. And it came back and I thought, oh yeah. So it was really looking good in our pots. Customers went crazy for it. It was offered by a couple of people in the U.S. that they shipped to, and the online reviews were rave. And it was because of the different form again, a bit of an English rose look, but on a very tidy floor, but a plant, great foliage, but lasting forever as a cut flower. I love the color when I saw the pictures of it. Yeah, it has a nice color and it opens almost as halo effect. The outside of the blooms, petals open down. So it's a nice one. And the reviews again, if you see consistently great reviews on a rose, you know, probably pretty good. If it's in all the climates, if it's consistently getting bad reviews, maybe it's one that just did well here, but it's not doing well everywhere else. That's what I love. Tested roses. Roses have been out for a every garden is different and climate is different and can't even really go by the zone because every gardener is different too. Right. So I pay attention as well, you know, zone seven and zone seven, who was the gardener? What area was that zone seven in? How did they plant it? But once you have enough plant material out there, and that's always been our biggest struggle is to get enough out there to get the reviews in on them. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. My pleasure. My pleasure to come out here and see and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next. Sure. Anytime you like