The Origins of David Austin's Cut Roses

Each year, David Austin's team of hybridisers make thousands of hand crosses under carefully controlled conditions. In spring, the new seedlings germinate. As each one flowers, it will be individually assessed for characteristics which include fragrance, purity of colour and perfection of form. Each potential new cut rose must remain beautiful at all stages as the tight bud is transformed into a fully open bloom.

These photographs show several of our new seedlings being assessed in our cut flower testing facility. Although all the seedlings tested show some promise, the real challenge is to create roses that combine all the most desirable characterisics. The odds of success are over 100,000 : 1, so sadly it is highly unlikely that any of the roses pictured here will actually be released as a David Austin cut flower.

THE STORY SO FAR David Austin’s fragrant cut roses are based on his English garden varieties, which are admired by gardeners world-wide for their fragrance and old rose charm. It has taken fifteen years and over £3 million to marry the beautiful forms of David Austin's garden roses with the vase life of more than five days and the year-round availability of modern cut roses. When David Austin started to breed a new type of cut rose, his aim was to bring greater choice to the world of cut roses. He wanted people to be able to enjoy the charming, old rose flower forms in cut flower arrangements in their homes. Today David Austin Roses can offer the bride-to-be glorious, natural looking roses for her special day, similar to those that her great-great-grandmother might have picked fresh from the garden. In the future, we envisage making it possible to order a David Austin cut rose by form and fragrance as well as by colour. This is far removed from standard hybrid tea cut roses which are more commonly available. We expect that it will take at least another fifteen years before we are able to provide our cut rose customers with the same amount of choice we can already offer our garden rose customers. After all, David Austin has been working to develop his garden rose varieties for over fifty years. So at David Austin's nursery in Albrighton on the Shropshire border, the work continues. In the meantime, we are proud to offer a small, but steadily expanding selection of truly romantic cut roses in the English Garden tradition.

We are sorry that our cut rose varieties are not available as bare roots or containerised roses.