Harkness roses

NB Remember! This is a picture book with words - not the other way round.
About the author
My grandfather was Head Gardener at Cleeve Court in Somerset. My middle name, Rose, is
after his wife, my grandmother, a keen rose grower yet before researching this book I did not
know a hybrid tea from a floribunda. Had it not been for the guidance, advice and support of
Peter Harkness, it would never have seen the light of day. Before I tried this writing lark, I earned
a crust as an art teacher, college tutor, tourist guide, journalist and press officer.
Other Books.
Royal Hertfordshire: Murders and Misdemeanours (Amberley)
Hertfordshire's Secrets & Spies (Amberley)
The Secret Lives of Hertfordshire Writers (Tempus)
Hertfordshire: A~Z (Sutton)
The Little Book of Hitchin (Shoestring Publications)
Essential Islington: From Boadicea to Blair (Sutton)
Islington: The First 2000 Years (Shoestring Publications)
www.roytrs.com
www.pamela-shields.co.uk
www.scribbling4bread.wordpress.com
About the editor
List gongs, books etc., senior member of the internationally famous family of rose breeders.
Oxford historian and Editor of The Rose magazine, Peter adjudicates at rose shows all over the
world etc.,.
Foreword
by Peter Harkness
Preface
Book signings can be tedious so I was cheered when Peter walked into one of mine. Doris, a
friend keeping me company, told him she had just bought Remembrance and he told her the
story behind it. When I asked if there was a book about the stories he said no. I asked if he would
mind if I had a go. Not at all he replied, I’ll let the archivist at The First Garden City Heritage
Museum in Letchworth know I have given you open access to the Company archives. Most of
what follows come from those forty-two cardboard boxes, the rest from Peter and other family
members. Not one self–congratulatory trumpet could be heard blowing in the archives but I did
not have to dig to find accolades from many, many, others, they are there in abundance. With
more than three hundred unique, signature Harkness roses to choose from, each with its own
story, I finally managed to whittle them down to????? which had the most interesting stories
behind the names. This is my tribute to the Harkness family which has met everyone who is
anyone including many members of the royal family yet remain a modest, unostentatious, pub

grub as opposed to a Ritz type of family. Integrity, genuine, sincere, no airs or graces are
epithets which spring to mind.
Dedication
To the memory of Jack Harkness rose breeder non pareil. Also to the memory of my mother,
Olive Selby Knott, who whispered. ‘This is a HARKNESS rose’ reverentially as we walked around
her mother’s garden in Llanbradach, a sooty South Wales mining village. Little could we know
that one day I would live near the world famous Nursery in Hertfordshire and write a book about
Harkness Roses.
Thanks to etc.,
Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Rose
3. John and Robert Harkness
4. R. Harkness & Co
5. William Harkness
6. Jack and Peter Harkness
7. Peter and Robert Harkness
8. Robert and Philip Harkness
9. How Harkness Roses get Their Names
10. Jack’s First Successes
11. Harkness Ladies
12. Royal Roses
13. Historic Anniversaries
14. Good Causes
15. The Arts
16. The Desert Rose
17. Special Mentions
18. James Mason Memorial Medal
19. Glittering Prizes
20. Jack Harkness; A Tribute

1
Introduction

Rose growing is democratic. Anyone can grow one although the author, on a tour of the
Inns of Court in London, hid a smile when a barrister, admiring roses in Inner Temple Garden
asked the Head Gardener for his expert advice and was taken aback to be told his fee was the
same as the barrister’s.

Temple Garden is where Shakespeare set the meeting between Richard Plantagenet and
John Beaufort in Henry VI which sparked what we now call the Wars of the Roses although the
term was not used until 1829 when Sir Walter Scott published Ivanhoe.

The Tudor Rose, as every English schoolchild knows, is a combination of the red rose of
the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of York

When man made hybridisation started depends on the book you read. Some say in
antiquity, others say in Holland in the 1400s when wild roses were cultivated, still others that it
began around 1800 in France when China Roses were crossed with European roses.

Modern, man-made, hybrid, roses which probably number around 20,000 are grown from
seed, just as in nature. Wild briars are used for breeding because they’re disease free. Hybrid
roses created before 1867 tend to be classified as Old Garden Roses.

Rose breeding is the art and science of changing the genetics of plants to produce new
strains. Some breeders, who border on fanatical, breed for characteristics such as shape, smell,
colour, size etc.,

The rose. the Queen of Flowers, is the national flower of England. Peter Harkness, who
has an MA in mediaeval history, says it started in 1236 when Eleanor of Provence married Henry
III of England and he adopted her family badge of a golden rose. Their son Edward 1, who used
the yellow rose as his emblem, can be seen with a rose on an arch in Westminster Abbey. His
brother Edmund chose the red rose. His grave in Westminster Abbey still has traces of red roses,
wild ones, of course.

2
The Rose

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The wild rose is the mother and father of all modern, cultivated roses. Worldwide, there are
thought to be around one hundred and twenty species although some sources say it might be as many
as a hundred and fifty. All are hardy.

Of the thirteen native to Britain, (canina rosa), with its vicious curved thorns, is the best known
and the most easily recognised. It was first called the dog rose in the 1700s because, so it’s said, it
was thought that infusions of the plant could cure rabies. During WWII, imports of fresh fruit into Britain
were virtually non-existent so it was used to make rose hip syrup. Still popular today, the syrup it has
more vitamin C than oranges.

Other familiar wild roses in Britain are the fragrant Musk Rose (rosa moschata) and the Sweet
Briar Eglantine (rosa rubiginosa) mentioned in Shakespeare. Although the Bard says roses have
‘thorns’, breeders call them ‘prickles’.

Each five petalled flower of the wild rose lasts just one day with no repeat blooming. When the
petals fall, hips form which birds peck to get at the seeds. Some remain undigested in bird droppings,
some cling to their feathers and fall off creating new species. Bees also create new varieties by taking
pollen from one rose to another. These are, of course, natural hybrids. Rose breeders act like bees
but, unlike bees, choose the parents.



3
John and Robert Harkness

The famous Harkness Rose came about thanks to Thomas Harkness, a master tailor in
Yorkshire, and his wife Mary. When their sons Robert and John left school they helped in his business
but didn’t like being stuck inside. Envying a cousin who lived on a nearby farm they wanted to work
outdoors.

To make it happen, the young, ambitious, entrepreneurs saved their pocket money, invested two
pence each, bought wallflower seeds, raised them and sold the plants. They made forty shillings.
Justifiably pleased with their success they sold a pamphlet: How to Make Two Pounds Out of Four
Pence. Thomas must have been impressed because he gave them a little money to start a business in
Bedale, North Yorkshire. And so it came about that in 1879 Harkness & Sons was founded.

The brothers grew carnations, peonies, delphiniums, phlox, gladioli, aquilegia, pyrethrums,
pestemons, gaillardias and roses. Every time the brothers won Best in Show they ran up the Union
Jack on the Nursery.

The National Rose Society (NRS) founded in 1876 (it did not become Royal until 1965) started as
a private club for those who grew roses to show. It wanted, and still does, to encourage, improve and
extend the science, art and practice of the cultivation and conservation of roses and to pool and
disseminate knowledge of roses and rose growing. The world’s oldest and leading rose society has its
headquarters at the Gardens of the Rose, Chiswell Green, Hertfordshire. The gardens, which are open
to the public, have a rose collection charting the history of the rose.

There was fierce competition for prizes between professional and amateur exhibitors from all
walks of life. Shows sprang up everywhere. The most important was the one held by the National
Rose Show in St James Hall, London. In 1860, when it moved to Crystal Palace, a much bigger venue,
it attracted 16,000 visitors.

In 1879, the year Harkness & Sons was founded in the north, down south a farmer, Henry
Bennett, was the first in the UK to practice rose breeding as opposed to rose growing. He removed the
petals and anthers of blooms of the tea rose Mme Bravy and used pollen from Géant des Bataillest.
His day job being a cattle breeder, he called them Pedigree Roses. The results were disappointing so
Bennett went to Lyon in France, where most rose breeding and propagation was being carried out, to
learn the tricks of the trade.

When his first varieties were launched, he put the names of both ‘parents’ on the labels. The
importance of his systematic method of keeping track of crosses was recognised by the National Rose
Society which honoured him as the first to put England on the world rose map. Growers in France,
Ireland and Denmark admired his innovative ideas. Robert and John must surely have known of
Henry Bennett and his ‘pedigree’ roses, some of which are still sold today.

In 1882, the Harkness brothers, who had begun to make a name for growing and exhibiting
roses, started to sell them by mail order. In 1887 they travelled eight thousand miles by train in twenty-
eight days to thirty-four rose shows. Against all the odds, fighting off stiff competition, John Harkness
won the coveted, fiercely fought over National Rose Society Championship Trophy with Anna Olivier, a

tea rose. Almost a hundred years later when his grandson, Peter Harkness, visited Bermuda he was
astonished to see growing next to his host’s front door the very rose John exhibited in 1887, his first
championship success.

This was the first time the NRS Trophy travelled to the north of England. It usually went to
growers in the south. One chap bagging prizes was Mr E.B. Lindsell, solicitor and land agent from
Hitchin in Hertfordshire, forty miles north of London.

Publicly recognised as a champion rose grower, in 1889 John Harkness FRHS of Harkness &
Sons, Rose Growers, Nurserymen and Florists, The Grange Nurseries, Bedale, Yorkshire published
Practical Rose Growing: a guide for amateurs in the cultivation of the rose for exhibition and decorative
purposes.

Queen Victoria loved roses and started ordering them from Harkness in the 1890s.
Notwithstanding their success Robert and John knew that, in the main, Yorkshire is too cold to
produce winning blooms in time for the annual National Rose Society Show. They knew too that
Hertfordshire is the home of the wild briar and that many growers taking prizes, winning major national
awards lived there. The brothers decided it made sense to open a branch in Hitchin. This meant of
course that one of them had to move south but neither wanted to leave their homes, families or North
Yorkshire Cricket. Both were fanatics. Yorkshire won the County Championship in 1893, 1896 and
1898 (Bedale is still fanatical about the game).

It was resolved in the time honoured way by tossing a coin. Robert ‘lost’ so it was John who
stayed in Yorkshire. Due to circumstances of fate, it would be Robert’s Hitchin branch which would
survive life’s vicissitudes and is still going strong today. John’s son Verney had little interest in
gardening (although his sons John, known as Jack, and Peter did). Robert’s son William (Bill) followed
in his footsteps and became a championship rose grower.

4
R. Harkness & Co

In 1892 Robert, with John’s blessing, took every other dormant budded stock from their Nursery
in Yorkshire and, with the help of Mr Lindsell, became the tenant of Oakfield Farm in Charlton near
Hitchin.

In 1895, he moved into Charlton House, birthplace of local hero Henry Bessemer (d.1898). It may
be that Robert, a Yorkshireman, knew of Bessemer. Sheffield, just sixty miles from Bedale, produced
10,000 tons of Bessemer steel every week. Bessemer often reminisced about his idyllic childhood in
Charlton House where he learned metallurgy in his father’s type foundry. His godfather was Henry
Caslon of type font fame. During the Crimean War Bessemer patented a process by which pig iron
could be turned into steel, a method not superseded until 1974.

In 1897 John introduced Merrie England, a sport of Heinrich Schultheis. It was a good job patents
were not in force. In 1971 when a sport appeared on a Meilland rose, it took French law fifteen years
to decide who owned it.

In 1899 Robert’s wife Sarah, 37, died. His father, Thomas, 82, died the same year while visiting
him (he is buried in Yorkshire). In 1900 Robert’s sister Gladys had a rose named for her to celebrate
her fourteenth birthday. She died in 1978 age 94. When Peter Harkness visited the rosarium at
Sangerhausen in Germany, the largest collection of roses in the world, he saw beds of Gladys
Harkness.

By 1901 Robert and John decided, as their father had died, to dissolve Harkness & Sons and
form two new companies. Robert founded R. Harkness & Co. By 1903 he had 100,000 rose plants for
sale. Coloured picture postcards sold to tourists in Hitchin included one of Harkness Rose Gardens.

In 1909 Gertrude Jekyll (pronounced Jeekill) world famous after creating four hundred gardens in
the UK, Europe and America, contacted Robert who was one of her regular suppliers. If her name
conjures up another Jekyll it’s because family friend, the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, borrowed the
name for his novel Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Very knowledgeable about roses, she was a judge at The Botanical Show (pre-cursor of The
Chelsea Flower Show) and had written fourteen books on gardening. Her close friend, the young up
and coming architect Edwin Lutyens, had received a commission to remodel Temple Dinsley, a Queen
Anne house in Preston near Hitchin. Together they created the formal gardens which are still there.
His legacy is the elaborate terraces; hers is the rose garden.

One day Lutyens will be knighted, called ‘the greatest artist in building Britain produced’ but in
1909, it was Gertrude Jekyll who was famous, Lutyens was unknown. When they met, he was twenty,
fresh from college; she was fifty, the doyenne of English garden designers. Lutyens received all his
early commissions through Miss Jekyll who, he said, was his fairy godmother. The first was Munstead
Wood, her house in Godalming, Surrey (Lutyens was brought up in Godalming).

She introduced Lutyens to Mark Fenwick who recommended him to his cousin, H. (Bertie)
Fenwick (of London department store fame) who bought Temple Dinsley. When they were working
there, Lutyens and Jekyll were also re-designing the gardens for Putteridge Bury, Sir Felix Cassell’s

home in Luton not far away. Designed by Sir Ernest George, the Bury was set in five hundred acres.
Wealthy families wanted the kudos of a Lutyens house with a Jekyll garden.

Lutyens affectionately referred to Jekyll as ‘Bumps’. Their warm, close, friendship lasted until her
death. They toured the countryside in her pony and cart looking at houses. Both were fans of the Arts
& Crafts movement.

When Miss Jekyll asked Robert to supply and plant the roses for Temple Dinsley her preferred
colours were creams, yellows and pinks (she disliked magenta). A proud Robert put a photograph of
the Gertrude Jekyll Rose Garden at Temple Dinsley on the cover of his catalogue.

When Gertrude Jekyll died in 1932, Lutyens designed her memorial. Lutyens, who went on to
plan the lay-out of New Delhi, to design the Viceroy’s house there, the Cenotaph in London and the
British Embassy in Washington, died in 1944. His ashes are in St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Lutyens/Jekyll/Harkness gardens at Temple Dinsley and Putteridge Park were restored to
the original designs. Both are English Heritage Grade II Listed. Temple Dinsley became The Princess
Helena College in 1935. Putteridge Bury is now owned by the University of Bedfordshire. Hertfordshire
Gardens Trust restored the garden which is maintained by the University. Unfortunately the re-planted
Harkness roses did not survive.

By 1914 life started to go wrong for Robert. In May, when his business was badly hit by late, hard
frosts, his son in law (who he disliked) took over the tenancy of Oakfield Farm. Robert’s son William
(Bill) joined the army and WWI put paid to selling roses. By 1918, R. Harkness & Co had gone into
liquidation and ceased trading.

5
William Harkness

In 1918, at the end of WWI, William (Bill) bought back the good name of R. Harkness & Co and
the list of his father’s customers. He married Edith, daughter of the tenant of Angel Vaults in Hitchin
and they took over The Raven Inn in Hexton near Hitchin. They had a daughter, Mary (named after his
grandmother?). Community minded, Bill served on Hitchin Town Council.

Pub work did not interest Bill. Roses did so he rented land in Hitchin to grow them. Rose grower
non-pareil, he will win the National Rose Championship twenty-one times. Not that accolades went to
his head. He said: ‘Any fool can grow a rose; it takes a genius to sell it’.

In 1920, as his father was leading his horse into the stable, he was struck by lightning. Never the
same again he died a short time later. The following year, Bill’s wife Edith injured herself moving a
heavy beer barrel and also died. Bill gave up the tenancy of The Raven to concentrate on growing
roses and moved from Hexton to Hitchin. He worked dawn to dusk. Saturday, early finish day ended at
4pm. Ploughing was done by horses in leather leggings to protect them from vicious rose thorns
wearing string muzzles to protect roses from them (stop them eating the roses).

Among Bill’s best selling roses was Dorothy Perkins. In the 1960s Peter Harkness was surprised
when the real Dorothy Perkins, grand-daughter of Charles Perkins (founder of Jackson & Perkins) the
famous American rose breeder turned up at the Harkness Nursery. He assumed the name was made
up. It turned out the rose was named for her in 1901 when she was two. It kick started the tradition of
naming roses for family members. In 1908 Dorothy Perkins won prizes at the National Rose Society.

Other best sellers for Bill included Albertine a rambling rose raised in France and Mrs Cornwallis
West featured on the W.D & H.O Wills Cigarette advertising cards which people collected.

In 1936, when Eric Blair, a lover of roses better known to the world as George Orwell, moved to
nearby Wallington he bought an Albertine in Hitchin and told his readers about it in his As I Please
column in the left wing paper Tribune.
I like praising things, when there is anything to praise, and I would like here to write a few lines — they
have to be retrospective, unfortunately — in praise of the Woolworth’s Rose. In the good days when

nothing in Woolworth’s cost over sixpence, one of their best lines was their rose bushes. They were
always very young plants, but they came into bloom in their second year, and I don’t think I ever had
one die on me. Their chief interest was that they were never, or very seldom, what they claimed to be
on their labels. One that I bought for a Dorothy Perkins turned out to be a beautiful little white rose with
a yellow heart, one of the finest ramblers I have ever seen. A polyanthus rose labelled yellow turned
out to be deep red. Another, bought for an Albertine, was like an Albertine, but more double, and gave
astonishing masses of blossom. These roses had all the interest of a surprise packet, and there was

always the chance that you might happen upon a new variety which you would have the right to
name John Smithii or something of that kind.

Mrs Cornwallis West was the American heiress Jennie Jerome who married Lord Randolph
Churchill, son of the Duke of Marlborough, at Blenheim Palace. She scandalised polite society when
she married the handsome, penniless, George Cornwallis West who was the same age as her son

Winston (25). She was 45. They rented Salisbury Hall an Elizabethan moated mansion in Hertfordshire
and gave great parties at which her guests punted on the moat. Frequent visitors included her
notorious friend, Alice Keppel, the great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. Keppel was the
mistress of Edward V11. After her divorce age 64 Mrs Cornwallis West again scandalised society
when she married an Australian sheep farmer, who at 41 was younger than Winston.

In 1931 when Bill discovered a sport on Heinrich Schultheis he called it The Queen Alexandra
Rose. In 1932 he re-married, had a second daughter Isobel, built a house near his beloved rose fields
and again won the National Rose Championship Trophy. The following year, his uncle John, who first
won the Trophy for Harkness, died. As John’s son Verney had little interest in gardening, his business
was carried on by John’s sons-in- law.

In 1936 Bill was the proud owner of a new, purpose built, office. It and the name carved in stone,
R. Harkness & Co is still there on Cambridge Road, Hitchin. Because of his rose hedge leading to the
office this section became known as Rose Hill.

In 1937, Jack, 19, began working with Bill and made his first crosses to breed his own, new,
varieties of roses. One day he will be a premier rose breeder, one of a small, elite group.

In 1939, after only seven years together, Bill’s second wife died.
A mere twenty years after The Great War supposed to end all wars came WWII. Jack was called
up. The government told Bill to turn his fields over to vegetables for the war effort. Allowed to allocate
a mere 10% to roses, he tested seedlings raised by other growers. There will be no opportunity to sell
roses by mail order until the war is over so thousands of envelopes intended for catalogues gather
dust. After the war, due to a severe paper shortage, the new mail order catalogue was too small for the
envelopes.
In 1962, clearing out old papers in the office, Jack discovered that Bill had narrowly missed out
on being the UK agent for Peace, one of the world’s most famous roses. He found a letter to Bill sent
by French horticulturist Francois Meilland inviting him to be the UK distributor of a 1935 seedling
registered as 3-35-40. Meilland anticipated the German invasion of France so sent cuttings to Italy,
Turkey, Germany and America but not England (Bill probably never replied to his letter).
When Meilland sent a parcel to Conard-Pyle in America on one of the last aircraft to leave France
before the German invasion it contained 3-35-40. It would produce enormous gold and ivory flowers.
As communication between the cultivators of 2-35-40 was not possible the rose had different names.
In France it was Madame A. Meilland, in Italy Gioia, in Germany Gloria Dei and in America Peace.
In 1948 following the international success of Peace Meilland was determined that his future
creations would be protected in law. He made several trips to The Bureau of Industrial Property in
Paris to make his case and was granted a patent in 1951, not for Peace, too late for that, but for
Rouge Meilland, the first patent in France given to a flower. In 1957, the French Government held a
conference in Paris concerning the protection of new varieties after which French law acknowledged

breeders of new plant varieties had exclusive property rights. Meilland’s fight would inspire the UK
1964 Plant Breeders Rights Act

War over, reunited with his beloved roses, in 1945 Bill wins the National Rose Championship
again and will continue to do so for the next successive ten years. By now, there was, sadly, nothing
left to show for his uncle John’s business in Yorkshire except for commemorative street signs,
Harkness Drive and Harkness Close.

Jack, back home, suggested they raise their own roses but Bill did not think it made good
business sense. In 1947 Jack married Betty Moore. One of the last roses he created will be named for
her. They will have a daughter, Elizabeth and sons Robert and Philip. One day the brothers will take
over the running of the family firm.

The following year, Jack’s younger brother Peter, an Oxbridge history graduate started to work
part time at Harkness. He will make his name as an historian and Editor of The Rose magazine and
set the standard for rose cultivation. Appearing all over the world at rose shows, lectures and
conferences, Peter will serve as a judge and give advice on growing roses in many publications. For
now, however, his first job is to insert wires into the calices of roses to hold them upright for a
forthcoming Show.

In 1950 Harkness introduced Scabrosa. Discovered in the Nursery, nobody could figure out how
it got there. Fragrant with large magenta blooms, its crab apple-size hips attract birds in winter. Jack
said its stamens glow like a torch bulb.

Peter joined the Company on a permanent basis in 1953. One of his work colleagues was
destined for great things. In the summer of 1955 a young Cambridge graduate, a Yorkshireman who
loved the countryside, booked into a nearby Baldock hotel to start work at Harkness. When he ran out
of money he pitched a tent near the Nursery. He wrote to his sister telling her he was very happy at
Harkness despite having to get up at six to ‘fiddle with the roses’. His job was to follow ‘the expert as
he grafts expensive rose buds on to common bushes …he liked being outdoors, liked his work
colleagues and his ‘good employers’. He commented on the ‘perfect weather, perfect country and
perfect money’.

When Peter invited the summer workers to supper at his home he was a bit surprised when
Hughes started spouting poetry. The following summer Hughes married fellow poet Sylvia Plath four
months after being introduced to her.

In 1984, when Ted Hughes succeeded John Betjeman as Britain’s Poet Laureate. Peter wrote to
congratulate him and ask if was by any chance the E. J. Hughes who worked for Harkness in 1955.
Hughes replied from Devon saying he was indeed that same young man. The hired help ended up with
a plaque in Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Bill, who helped the National Rose Society design Buckingham Palace rose garden in the 1930s,
supplied some of the roses after the Queen's accession in 1953.

In 1959, Bill, who had been unwell for some time, died.

Jack and Peter took over as joint Managing Directors. Once again two Harkness brothers were
running the show.

6
Jack and Peter Harkness

In 1961 when Jack could finally realise his dream of creating his own roses, he wrote to two
highly respected breeders, Pat Dickson and Sam McGredy in Ireland and asked if he could see their
Nurseries so that he could start up in competition with them. Come and stay as long as you like they
replied generously.

He stayed a week, went home, planted the best varieties of roses he could find, rented a
glasshouse and with no experience, little knowledge or money, started pollinating new varieties of
roses from seed.

The plants grew well at first, then stopped. The brothers discovered that a residue of tomato
fertiliser salts in the soil was to blame so flooded the ground. The plants recovered. A few years later
they were the proud owners of their own, purpose built, light, airy glasshouse designed to minimise the
risk of mildew. It’s still in use today.

The first in the Harkness dynasty to raise, as opposed to grow, roses Jack’s obituaries will
honour him as one of the most famous of the modern rose breeders. Told that from the same two rose
parents there are 250 million different ways in which their genes could be combined, Jack will make
over 2000 crosses every year. His first involved 342 different sets of parents. The yield was 40,000
seeds which were stored through the winter and sown early 1963. Twenty-four were selected as
looking promising. Five years later they had 600,000 young roses (maidens) growing in twenty-six
acres.

The Harkness Mission Statement of today could have been written then:
At the core of Harkness Roses is the development of new roses…At Harkness the rose breeding is
non-technical. There are no laboratory methods, just pollination by hand and reliance on the roses to
carry out their natural cycle. The main part of a rose breeder's work is in observing and selecting. Our

efforts are focussed on seeking better disease resistance; more perfume, more colours, and (of
course), more flowers over a longer period.

By 1964 Harkness employed forty staff and had 65,000 customers on the mail order list although
catalogues sent out brought in less than the cost of production. The photographs were taken by Jack’s
wife Betty. Peter chose potential high flyers from Jack’s creations, looked for clients and did PR, Sales
and Marketing. He later branched out into Harkness Roses notepaper, bath salts, perfume and tea
trays.

Every rose a breeder introduces is the result of years of hard work, sometimes a decade, a true
labour of love. Luckily, three years after Jack started raising roses, something fortuitous happened,
something long overdue. It became possible to ‘patent ‘his creations under the 1964 UK Plant
Varieties and Seeds Act. Under the Act, legal rights were granted to the breeder for exclusive control
over the seeds, cuttings and harvest as long as a variety is new, distinct, uniform and stable.

A variety is; new if it has not been commercialized for more than a year in the country of
protection; distinct if it differs from all other known varieties by one or more important botanical
characteristics; uniform if the plant characteristics are consistent from plant to plant within the variety;

stable if the plant characteristics are genetically fixed and therefore remain the same from generation
to generation.

The breeder must give the variety a generic name to be used by anyone who markets it.
Harkness has the prefix HAR followed by a letter of the alphabet denoting the year of the seed and a
‘memory’ name suffix. This name, which is officially registered, must be sold alongside the name the
rose ends up with. R Harkness & Co Ltd is Number 381 on the Plant Breeders List. Harkness New
Roses is 382.

Seed, which must be submitted to the plant variety office, is grown for one or more seasons. If
tests are passed, exclusive rights are granted to the breeder for fifteen years. Annual renewal fees
maintain the rights.

Rose breeder Sam McGredy raised the best seller Elizabeth of Glamis named for the Queen
Mother. When Harry Wheatcroft grew roses from its buds, McGredy sued him. He lost because the Act
was not in force at the time. Elizabeth of Glamis was the first rose to be given copyright protection in
Britain.

Plant Breeding Rights comes under Food and Environmental Research Agency (formerly
DEFRA). With costs amounting to more than £1000 this means that on an average of twenty pence
royalty, 6750 plants have to be sold to break even. If a breeder shares the royalty with his agent that
number has to double. The cost of trade marking a rose in the UK is £200.

Rose breeding starts in May. The aim is to fertilise a brand new rose from one variety with pollen
from a different variety to create a brand new rose. The mother and father is chosen for characteristics
such as colour, stem length, disease resistance and petal shape. The pollen-bearing anthers of the
mother plant are removed and the inner petals are stripped away leaving the stigma. A sterilised
paintbrush is put into the pollen-laden anthers of the father plant then applied to the stigma of the
mother plant. 90-120 days after pollination, as the rose hips form, they go from green to orange or red.

The seed harvest is in the autumn. By November there are about 30,000 seeds meaning a
possible 30,000 new varieties of rose. Of these about 20,000 germinate. Of those around a thousand
are propagated to be planted out. These are assessed over two years. Flowers the world will,
hopefully, fall in love with are saved, the rest are discarded. By the end of a ten year period five or six
will have made it through.

Jack is doing what happens in nature but under controlled conditions and usually has about
thirty-six projects on the go. Some seedlings reject the mate chosen for it (just as in many pre-
arranged marriages). New roses, like humans, vary widely regarding their genetic make up. Some are
very close to one ‘parent’ and have only a few traits from the other. Hybridising has been likened to a
stud farm. Or a marriage bureau. The number of possible variations is infinite. Jack’s mantra was 1.
Choose the right rose parents. 2. Get the seeds to germinate. 3. Cross fingers.

Once a decision is made regarding a particular seedling, it’s sent for trial to the Royal National
Rose Society, St Albans, Hertfordshire, England. Eight years, sometimes ten, will pass before it can be

marketed. A rose breeder has to be, by nature, an optimist. He lives in the future. He must believe that
that this year’s hard work will result in flowers rose lovers will enjoy for many years to come.

By May, Jack could see his new flowers. If he liked what he saw he budded on to root stocks. A
Harkness rose, therefore, is not what many buyers may think it is, a rose sold by the Company. It’s far
more personal. It’s a unique creation, a rose that would not exist if Harkness had not - for want of a
better word – ‘invented’ it. Every Harkness rose is an original work of art and science and patented as
such.

Rose breeding is extremely labour intensive. Breeders are not in it for the money, it’s not a
business to get rich by. At best it could be described as returning a modest profit. Jack once said:
‘When I see in print the enormous value of roses I can hardly credit the statement Barclays Bank
regularly sends me. The reward is knowing the pleasure so many people get from their roses’.

Just as books go out of print, roses fall victim to changing fashions (such as trends regarding
colour). Many once famous Harkness roses are no longer on the market but are still growing in
someone's garden somewhere.

Worldwide, there are about twenty thousand different roses on the market. Each has its own
distinctive name. Over three hundred were bred by Harkness who launch a new rose every year at the
Chelsea Flower Show and have been known to introduce six. From 1966 until he died in 1997 Jack
introduced 200 new roses. Peter is often amused by comments from visitors to Chelsea. One year,
Jack’s son Phil, standing by a Harkness Gold Medal with thousands of roses above, beneath and to
the sides of him was asked if he specialised in roses. They have, almost, got used to people asking
where they can buy Harkness rose bulbs.

Harkness receives many unusual requests. In 1975 one must have seemed like a case of taking
coals to Newcastle. It was from Pahlavi University (named after the then reigning Pahlavi dynasty)
asking for roses to be sent to Shiraz, The City of Roses.

Shiraz is near Persepolis which was founded in 500 BC by Darius the Great, It was destroyed by
Alexander the Great in 332 BC. Also known as The Garden City it has a Garden of Oranges and a
Garden of Paradise famous for its variety of trees and plants such as cypress, pine, orange and
persimmon.

Harkness sent 300 rose plants - 241 varieties. The oldest variety was Maiden’s Blush known
since the 1400s. The next oldest was Gallica Versicolour from the 1500s also known as Rosa Mundi,
said to be named after Rosamond Clifford, favourite mistress of Henry II. In Roses for English
Gardens, Gertrude Jekyll refers to the Damask rose, Rosa Mundi and says it’s also known as Cottage
Maid. Distinctive, pale pink, striped a darker pink, the rose has a yellow centre and strong fragrance.
Also included was a modern Harkness rose, Yesterday, Jack’s creation of an old fashioned English
garden rose.

The roses, which travelled inside a container 4000 miles by road, were kept at 40F on the
eighteen day journey. Once there they were planted by an English landscape gardener. The author

contacted the university to no avail to ask if the rose garden is still there and if any of the roses
survived.

When the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty (the Shah of Persia was
deposed) all universities were closed for three years during Iran's Cultural Revolution of 1980-1987.
Pahlavi University was re-named Shiraz University. In 2011, the Iranian parliament voted to loosen ties
with Britain. The UK expelled Iran's diplomats.

Jack retired in 1977 to concentrate on his breeding work, to write Roses and to work with the
British Association of Rose Breeders (BARB) which he helped found. Wanting to live near the sea, he
opted for Southwold in Suffolk but continued with his rose breeding and returned to Hitchin often,
whenever he was needed. The varieties he hybridised resulted in introductions years later. His sons
assumed responsibility for the wellbeing of the resultant hips. Everyone at Harkness helped in seedling
selection deciding which varieties should be introduced.

Peter took over as MD of the rose breeding company, Harkness New Roses Ltd and of R.
Harkness & Co Ltd.

7
Peter and Robert Harkness

1979 sees the Centenary of R. Harkness & Co. To mark the occasion a rose was named for
Marion Harkness, Jack’s stepmother. Also, Little White Pet, an old rose much loved by the Victorians
was relaunched to commemorate the joint centenary of Harkness Roses and the Chelsea Flower
Show. The RHS awarded Marion Harkness a Gold Medal. In Harkness terms a good Chelsea involves
a Gold Medal, good publicity, good business and rapid sale of flowers and plants when the Show ends
to save the bother of taking them home again.

What a decade the 1980s turned out to be for Harkness. It ushered in connections with eight
members of the royal family: Princess Diana, Princess Michael of Kent, Lord Mountbatten, Lady Sarah
Bowes Lyon, Princess Alice, Prince Rainier of Monaco, Prince Andrew and HM The Queen.

Peter received a letter from Prince Rainier of Monaco who was planting a garden in memory of
his late wife, Princess Grace. As she loved roses, he invited Harkness to contribute some bushes. The
Prince opened the garden to the public June 18 1984. The garden, fragrant with the scent of 4,000
roses (150 varieties) from leading European and American specialists has thousands of visitors every
day.

Grace Kelly, an American film star, met the Prince when she opened the Cannes Film Festival in
April 1955. They married the following year. The wedding was televised focusing the world's attention
on the tiny principality. The couple had two daughters Stephanie and Caroline and a son Albert.

In 1982, driving home, Princess Grace suffered a stroke, careered over the edge of a winding
road and died. Guests at her funeral included representatives from all the European royal houses.
Diana, Princess of Wales, represented the British royal family.

Prince Rainier acceded to the throne following the death of his grandfather, Prince Louis II, in
1949. He died in 2005, after a reign of 56 years. His son succeeded him as Albert II.

In 1988 Harkness enjoyed excellent free publicity when a drama put it in the public eye. A hunted
gun man threatened to shoot two Harkness employees. As Anne Pateman and Ted Deards parked
their bikes in the shed ready for a day’s work they were, to put it mildly, taken aback when someone
shouted ‘Take Cover’!. A man on the roof, pointing a gun at them, ordered them to stay still.
Surrounded by police, he was shot in the shoulder.

The chase began at 7am in the Sun Hotel in Hitchin. Frank Morrison, on the run from
Birmingham where he shot a policeman and a security officer, escaped by taking a police car. He
abandoned that, broke down the front door of a house and took the householders car keys at gun
point. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The 1980s closed with Peter’s retirement. He will, like Jack and his grandfather John write many
books on roses including; Modern Roses (1988); Modern Garden Roses: Their Care and Cultivation
(1990); Roses by Nancy Gardiner and Peter Harkness (1993); Roses: From the Archives of the Royal
Horticultural Society (2003); The Rose: An Illustrated History (2003); Roses (2005). Jack’s sons,
Robert and Philip take over as joint MDs.

Before he left he had one more important mission. In May 1989 Peter did not feel all that grand
and put it down to fumes from field of rape which were rampant. This was frustrating as he and
Margaret were about to take a seedling for a naming competition at Westminster Cathedral as part of
their flower festival. The new named rose would be sold to help The Cardinal Hume Trust. Margaret
went on her own.

When she came home she asked if he felt any better told a little said would you get better quickly
if I told you that you have been invite to meet princess Diana tomorrow? Peer instantly felt a whole
heap better.

Next day in the cathedral peter couldn’t help thinking of tweedledum and tweedle dee from Alice
in onderland because as the princess and the Cardinal came into the nave they were both dressed in
scarlet and white.

Peter, lined up to be introduced, had a bunch of roses which because of the warm say smelled
sweet and strong. He told her about the rose competition and seeing she was genuinely interested
noticing she had not been presented with the usual bouquet asked her if she would like to have them.
Dian loved roses. Pleases as punch she said are you sure you can spare them? Peter too was
pleased as punch as he saw her moving around all assembled regaling them with the story of the
competition and holding the roses up to be smelled.

What won the competition? Rosy Future. It was launched in 1991.

8
Robert and Philip Harkness

Once again, two brothers are running the show. First, John and Robert, then Jack and Peter,
now Robert and Philip, the fifth generation of Harkness men.

Robert, a professional yachtsman until he joined the Company, is based in France. He licences
nurseries in EU countries to grow and market Harkness roses. Philip will design twenty Gold Medal
exhibits at the Chelsea Flower Show and write Reliable Roses.

In 1993 Amber Queen won the James Mason Memorial Medal for the rose which had given the
most pleasure over the last fifteen years. Harkness, although delighted, were a bit mystified for the
rose was a mere nine years old.

It was decided that when Lord Runcie opened the British Rose Festival at Hampton Court at 1
pm he would be presented with basket of Amber Queen after which the raiser of the rose would be
presented with the Medal by Clarissa Mason, widow of the film star.

She couldn’t make it so sent a stand in.
At 12,30 Peter, who was standing in for Jack, the raiser of the rose, went to get the basket from
the site’s refrigeration van but found access prevented by another van badly parked. It turned out than
the driver was asleep inside. It took repeated knocking for fifteen minutes to wake him.
The next trauma was that the magnificent James Mason Memorial Gold Medal made by Asprey’s
especially for Amber Queen had been left behind at the Royal National Rose Society HQ at St. Albans
miles away from Hampton Court.
In the event the stand in for Clarissa Mason presented Peter, the stand in for Jack, with a
hurriedly found stand in medal inscribed Merstham Garden Club. Vice President. Peter secreted the
imposter in his pocket.
In 1993 Peter was invited to visit the Fukuyama Rose Garden in Japan. There he was met by old
friend Dr Tomin Harada who was behind the introduction of the Harkness rose Hiroshima’s Children.
On display were beds of two more Harkness roses, Princess Chichibu and Greensleeves. Peter told
Dr Harada the origin of the song Greensleeves (erroneously attributed to Henry VIII). As he had never
heard of it, Peter and his interpreter sang a duet for him under an umbrella in the pouring rain.
At the official Reception that evening Dr Harada requested a repeat performance and handed
him the microphone. A taken aback Peter who didn’t know the words, knew that whatever he sang
would probably not be understood so instead gave three hundred dignitaries a rendering of a
Christmas carol he sang in his church choir way back in the 1940s.
NB Interview Robert and Philip

9
How Harkness Roses

Get Their Names

(all geese are not swans)

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet

Worldwide, there are thousands of different roses on the market. Each with its own distinctive
name, they come in all colours except black and blue. Three hundred were born and bred by Harkness
who receive, on average, three requests a week to name a rose but can introduce only a few new
roses a year.

As for the names themselves, Jack, who had a delicious sense of humour, was often somewhat
whimsical when choosing memory or codenames. To take one example, one chap, now long gone,
who commissioned a rose was corpulent. The seedling raised for him acquired the memory tag of
HARportly.

The naming of a Harkness rose can be convoluted. The bloom does not wake up one morning
with a name. A long road leads to the baptism. Names are a very important sales factor. The
difference between a name appealing to the rose buying public and not means the difference between
commercial success and a flop. Harkness hopes for publicity magnets but say it’s like picking a winner
for the Grand National. Names must catch the public’s imagination, must have a novelty factor, Buyers
like to at least be able to pronounce the name and are more comfortable with a familiar or a happy
one.

There are International Reference names and common names. The same rose can have
different names in different countries. In the UK the name consists of three words although Harkness
was allowed to bend the rule for Princess Michael of Kent.

So how do Harkness roses get their names? Being a woman in the family helps. Eight are after
family members. Anne, Betty, Elizabeth, Ena, Isobel, Marion, Olive and Rosemary. Ena Harkness,
once considered the perfect red rose, put Harkness Roses and the small market town of Hitchin on the
world map. Say Harkness think Hitchin. Say Hitchin think Harkness.

Some Harkness names are targeted at impulse buyers who choose a rose by the name alone,
some are random, some reflect emotions from great joy to deep sorrow. They can be named for
historic anniversaries, members of the royal family, births, birthdays, anniversaries, retirements,
deaths or tragedies, pets or people in the public eye (those named for politicians are risky) privileged
to have roses named after them.

If it’s after a person, Harkness has to have permission in writing. If it’s for royalty it also has to be
first rigorously tested by the Royal National Rose Society. Companies keen to capture the imagination
of customers often choose roses to market their products, to commemorate special events or
anniversaries. Raisers of roses can charge hefty fees to name a rose. They can also charge nothing.
More than twenty-three charities have benefitted from Harkness generosity.

10
Jack’s First Successes

Escapade

Jack’s first rose reminded him of ‘butterflies perching on the bush’. Lilac pink with a white centre
it is, said Jack, most unusual, something different. It’s also anti-social and doesn’t like to be planted
near certain other roses.

‘As soon as it flowered ...it was obvious that here was something quite out of the ordinary but the
name occurred to me two years later when I saw it ‘out on another escapade with the bees” ready for

such scrapes a young beauty might decently get into. I like names which my roses suggest to me
themselves better than those which someone else invents for them’

The rose suggested it be called Escapade.
Peter says: ‘Jack’s favourite rose, Escapade, bears clusters of rather artless semi-double
blooms, in a rosy-violet fading to lilac-pink colour which is not to everyone’s taste. Why then should it
be that out of our first batch of introductions, this is the one that is still widely grown? The answers
must lie in its combination of good health, sweet fragrance, freedom of bloom and tolerance of a wide
range of climates. And there’s another factor – its colour and shrubby habit consort well with ancient
garden roses as well as with modern ones. Jack’s own description of the blooms as being ‘like
butterflies perching on the bush’ conveys much of its charm. It’s ironical to reflect that when the
original seedling flowered in the glasshouse, it was almost discarded because the plant looked frail!
Certainly this rose gave Jack great confidence that his breeding work was going well, for Sam
McGredy was heard to say, on seeing a bed of it, ‘I’d give my guts to have raised that rose.’ Coming
from Sam, that was praise indeed. Near the end of his life Jack told me that out of over 200 of his
roses introduced in commerce, Escapade was his favourite’
The first time the general public clapped eyes on Escapade was at the annual RNRS Summer
Show on the 29th June 1966. When, to his delight, Peter found himself explaining Jack’s work to HM
The Queen Mother, patron of RNRS, he couldn’t resist telling her it was Jack’s birthday. When she got
to Jack she said ‘I hear it’s your birthday’. A camera happened to click at that moment, showing him
open-mouthed in total surprise. In the autumn of that year Harkness received its first four awards. Five
more followed in 1967.
Jack advised and supplied rose plants for the Queen Mother's garden at Royal Lodge in Windsor
Great Park in the 1960s.

The Round Table Roses

The flower produced from Pink Parfait and Circus made Jack think of magic (which, of course,
every new rose is). His mind wandered to magicians then to Merlin. Merlin it was. Merlin inspired King
Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, Guinevere and Excalibur.

In November 1967 Princess Margaret and her husband Earl Snowdon attended the première of
Camelot in Leicester Square London. The film, which was based on the life of King Arthur, starred
Richard Harris as Arthur and Vanessa Redgrave as Guinevere.

The couple was served pre-theatre snacks of oysters and champagne at The Savoy Hotel. On
arrival at the theatre the Princess was presented with a bouquet of Jack’s Round Table Roses. Hitchin
is so kind to roses the flowers were cut in the Harkness Nursery from unprotected bushes growing in
open ground.

Arakan

The rose from Pink Parfait x Ivory Fashion brought back memories to Jack of early morning mists
in the jungles of Burma where he served during the war. Launched in 1968, he called his rose Arakan.

Arakan is the coastal region of Burma bordering India (now Bangladesh) separated from the rest
of Burma by mountainous jungle terrain. The Arakan Campaign was the first Allied attack after the
Japanese conquest of Burma in 1942. Japan was defending the Arakan when the British launched its
campaign to retake Burma. Victory there meant that the tide turned in favour of the allies.

Atlantis

The yellow stamens of a single off blue flower from Jack’s cross from Orangeade and Lilac
Charm reminded him of Atlantis, the city sinking beneath the waves. Atlantis was introduced in 1970.

The story of Atlantis, first mentioned by Plato was inspired by a huge volcanic eruption on, it’s
thought, Thera (modern day Santorini/Saint Irene) in 1600 BC which wiped out the Minoan civilisation.
Plato said his account came from a visit to Egypt by the Athenian Solon in 600 BC. Solon met Sonchis,
a priest of Thebes, who translated the story of Atlantis, recorded on columns in Egyptian hieroglyphs,
into Greek. The philosopher Crantor, the first of Plato's followers who wrote commentaries on the
works of his master, in the 5th century AD is said to have travelled to Egypt to see the columns for
himself. They were in the Temple of Sais on the Nile. There is no trace of the temple due to
generations of local farmers using the mud bricks to use as fertilizer.

Atlantis brought Jack and Peter their first Gold Medal in the 1969 rose trials in Rome. Peter says:
‘ …our purplish-lilac rose Atlantis…unusual hue made it an improbable winner and taught me that,
when selecting for that particular trial, outlandish roses were well worth including’.

Yesterday

Another success resulting from Jack’s first crosses was Yesterday so called because it looked
‘so old fashioned it would not look out of place in Victorian times’.

Jack wanted an orange rose so crossed Phyllis Bide which he said is an awkward rose from the
1920s with seed from Shepherd’s Delight fertilised with pollen from Ballerina. It was logged as F263B.
F (1967) 263 (263rd series of parentage crosses that year) B (second seedling from that cross picked
out as promising).

‘I thought of the name in bed one night. I was thinking of F263B instead of going to sleep. If Phyllis
Bide went back to Gloire de Dijon and Perle d’Or that means it could have been raised in the 1880s

not the 1920s. If they crossed it with Polyanthus or Chinas ...it might have been raised in Queen
Victoria’s time. That means F 263 B could be a rose from yesterday. Yesterday. Is that a silly name for

a rose? Yesterday. I think that suits it very well. I went to sleep then out of pure gratitude’.
Peter: ‘Yesterday’ was the most interesting of our 1974 new roses. It grows like a bushy
shrublet, carrying many sprays of small rosettes which are pink to lilac in colour and deepen to purple
towards the petal tips. The petals open flat, showing off the stamens. I’ve never seen any other rose
like it. It caught on surprisingly well, belying its frail appearance (thin stems, small leaflets) by thriving
in all sorts of climates. In Montreal one can expect a height of 18 inches in the short summer, but in
the warmth of Italy and South Africa it makes a fine climber to 8 feet, flowering over many weeks’.

11
Harkness Ladies

In 1892 Robert Harkness Snr noticed a sport on Heinrich Schultheis in Hitchin the same time his
brother John saw one in Bedale, Yorkshire.

A 'sport' is a natural variant of an existing rose, usually occurring as a colour change, sometimes
as a climbing version of a bush rose. It shares many characteristics with the original.

John’s Yorkshire sport was called Mrs Harkness for their mother Mary who died in 1881.
It had an illustrious parentage. A seedling of Alfred Colomb crossed with Baroness Adolphe de
Rothschild and E.Y.Teas produced Mabel Morrison. In 1882 Henry Bennett crossed Mabel Morrison
with E.Y. Teas and raised Heinrich Schultheis. The Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing by
George C. Thomas Jnr. (pub. 1914) has a photo of Heinrich Schultheis and Mrs Harkness on the
same bush.
In 1900 Alex Dickson raised a rose from a sport John noticed on Heinrich Shultheis for his sister
Gladys to celebrate her fourteenth birthday. She died in 1978 age 94. When Peter visited the rosarium
at Sangerhausen in Germany which as the largest collection of roses in the world, he saw beds of
Gladys Harkness.
In 1942, in Hitchin, a rose destined to become world famous is about to be introduced. Albert
Norman was a diamond setter for London jewellers. His love was however not jewels but roses and he
will one day be appointed President of The National Rose Society. He worked for ten years at home
near Frensham in Surrey trying to create the perfect red rose. When he crossed Crimson Glory with
Southport and McGredy's Yellow with Phyllis Gold he took his seedlings to his friend Bill Harkness and
asked him to raise them to see if they were any good. They were.
In 1946 Albert Norman wanted the red rose from one seedling to be named William Harkness.
Bill asked for it to be called after his wife Ena. Roses were patented in America, Germany and
Denmark from the 1930s, but not in the UK. When Albert Norman patented Ena Harkness in America it
became the best known red rose in the world and put R. Harkness & Co on the world map. Albert
named the yellow rose from a seedling raised by William Harkness after Bill’s second daughter Isobel.
Jack launched Elizabeth Harkness to celebrate his daughter’s twenty-first birthday. The beautiful,
scented, white large flowered rose narrowly missed the much coveted Gold Medal at the RNRS trials
by a few votes not given by rival breeders. Jack was upset not because he had not won but because
as a man who did more than anyone to promote fairness and co-operation within the fiercely
competitive rose trade knew instinctively the result was not fair, not a true reflection of what judges
thought. If Jack was anything he was fair.
1979 sees the Centenary of R. Harkness & Co. To mark the occasion a rose was named for
Marion Harkness, Jack’s mother-in-law. At the Harkness centenary lunch five Harkness ladies Ena,
Isobel, Elizabeth, Olive and Anne were together so had their photograph taken
1979 ushered the introduction of a rose named for Peter’s daughter Anne to celebrate her
twenty-first birthday. It took pride of place at her wedding in 1980. Peter says that Anne Harkness has
the most beautiful natural floral sprays in the rose world. Because the plant has to expend a lot of

energy to produce the heavy heads it flowers later than almost every other rose which is why
exhibitors win many prizes for it at late summer shows.

As the family was toasting Anne with champagne at the Chelsea Flower Show a photographer
eagle eyed for an interesting photograph introduced her to a lion cub brought along as an advertising
tool by the Marquess of Bath. Said cub promptly exercised its famous fangs making it a birthday to
remember.

In 1981 when Harkness was asked to supply English roses in apricot and cream to decorate St
Paul’s Cathedral for the wedding of Lady Diana Spencer to Prince Charles it decided on Anne
Harkness and Margaret Merrill.

In 1982, untrumpeted, Harkness launched a red rose, Olive, for Jack and Peter’s aunt to
celebrate her 84th birthday. When it won a prize cup at Geneva, it was filled with her roses and
presented to her.

In 1985 Peter’s other daughter Rosemary celebrated her twenty-first birthday. She was at
Chelsea that year to launch her rose. A melange of orange, salmon and yellow Rosemary Harkness
was planted along the walkways where passers by would be drawn to its sweet, lasting perfume. It
went on to win three top awards for fragrance in Britain and in New Zealand and another six for other
excellent garden qualities.

12
Royal Roses

Princess Chichibu

When Jack crossed Vera Dalton with Highlight using pollen from his own rose Merlin he could not
have foreseen that one day he would name the flower Princess Chichibu or that he would present the
rose to her at the 1971 Chelsea Flower Show in time for the Japanese Rose Festival.

The Fukuyama Rose Festival began in 1956 when residents planted 1000 rose seedlings. From
1971 Britain, America, Germany, France and other countries were invited to take part.

Her Imperial Highness Princess Chichibu 雍仁親王妃勢津子 was born Matsudaira Setsuko in
1909 in Walton on Thames, England when her father, Matsudaira Tsuneo, was the Japanese
ambassador to Great Britain. She belonged to an aristocratic family with close ties to the Japanese
Imperial Family. Her mother's sister married Prince Nashimoto, uncle of Empress Nagako. It was the
Empress who chose Setsuko as a wife for her second son, Prince Chichibu, after Setsuko’s uncle
formally adopted her which then made her the daughter of a viscount. She married Prince Chichibu in
1928 in Tokyo.

The Anglophile Prince and Princess who represented Japan in May 1937 at the coronation of
George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Westminster Abbey were very saddened by Japan's entry into
WWII. After the war, Princess Chichibu was appointed Honorary President of the Britain-Japan
Society. Fluent in English she made several semi-official visits to Britain. In 1962, she became Dame
Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. In 1978, Princess Margaret (on behalf of her mother
Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) invested Princess Chichibu as a Dame of the Grand Cross of the
Order of St Michael and St George.

Princess Chichibu died in 1995 age 85. Her autobiography, The Silver Drum: A Japanese
Imperial Memoir, was translated into English by Dorothy Britton. The rose named for Princess
Chichibu flourishes in Japan but is not so successful in England.

Mountbatten

In 1973 Jack took pollen from an unnamed seedling, crossed it with Peer Gynt and logged it as
M122E. The result was HARmantelle. HAR (Harkness) m (code for 1973) antelle because its glowing
yellow colour reminded him of a burning gas mantle. Slim elegant flowers growing at different levels
made it Jack’s ‘memory’ name of Pagoda.

SSAFA, the UK's oldest Armed Forces charity, Soldiers Sailors Airmen and Friends Association
asked for a rose to be named for its anniversary. SSAFA which has been helping Armed Forces and
their families for 125 years offers financial, practical and emotional assistance to 50,000 every year to
those serving, or has ever served.

Every summer Lord Mountbatten holidayed at his Irish home. On 27 August 1979 the family went
out in a fishing boat to collect lobster pots set the previous day. Half a mile from harbour, a bomb
exploded. Mountbatten was killed instantly along with his grandson Nicholas and a local Irish boy. His
daughter's mother-in-law, Lady Brabourne, died shortly afterwards; his daughter Patricia and son-in-
law Lord Brabourne were badly injured. Earl Mountbatten's funeral took place in Westminster Abbey.
He was buried in Romsey Abbey. .

Peter suggested HARmantelle be named for Mountbatten. Jack, who served under Mountbatten
in Burma during WWII, agreed. He admired his Commanding Officer and was impressed to hear him
address his troops in Hindustani.

Mountbatten took command when everything had gone wrong. The British and Indian army,
ravaged by disease had been beaten by the Japanese in Burma. Mountbatten defined three problems
monsoon, malaria, and morale. It was in the transformation of the soldiers' morale he made his
greatest contribution. He restored their pride in themselves and gave them confidence that they could
defeat the Japanese.

The Governor of The Tower of London, Chairman of SSAFA, hearing that Mountbatten was to be
launched to raise funds wrote to Buckingham Palace suggesting that Lady Diana Spencer carry the
rose in her wedding bouquet. It agreed providing it fitted in with her chosen colour scheme.

In May on his way to the Chelsea Flower Show, Peter took a few Mountbatten blooms to
Elizabeth and David Emanuel, designers of Diana’s wedding dress, for her approval. A few days later
Harkness heard from the royal florist to say Lady Diana would be pleased if they would supply thirty
tight buds for her bouquet. Harkness kept the secret until after the wedding in July.

Lady Diana's bouquet was 42 inches long, 15 inches wide and Edwardian in style. She loved
Mountbatten a fragrant floribunda with cupped blooms of primrose yellow delicately edged with pink.
She asked Doris Wellham, head florist at Longman's of London, to work the buds into the centre. Also
in the bouquet were white gardenias, orchids, stephanotis, lily of the valley, freesias and yellow
mimosa. Mountbatten was the only rose. The greenery was myrtle grown from sprays taken from

Queen Victoria’s wedding bouquet. When Princess Elizabeth married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
her bouquet also included myrtle from the bush grown from the myrtle in Queen Victoria's wedding
bouquet.

As one might expect, many a bride since has asked for a replica bouquet.
Peter: ‘It (Mountbatten) was singled out as outstanding very quickly and happened also to be so
vigorous that the rate at which new plants could be propagated was well above the average. Already
by 1977 we had sent it to seven overseas agents and five more by 1979. In 1976/77 it was sent to the
UK trial ground at St Albans, winning its first prize there in 1978, remarkably quick work. And it
notched up fourteen awards over the next few years from various countries. A special new competition
was organised by the rose growers to select a 'Rose of the Year' for 1982. The growers met to cast
their votes in Nottingham in October 1980. I put the case for 'Mountbatten' to that meeting and we
carried the day to a successful conclusion. Jack and I immediately went to see our father, then 89 and
living close to Nottingham, to tell him the news, and we were so glad to have had this opportunity
because in December he fell ill and died before Christmas. I could tell the meeting that we'd already
negotiated with SSAFA that the rose would bear the name 'Mountbatten', and that the plants we
sold would help their funds. What I couldn't tell them was that Charles and Diana had already
requested that they might have some young flowers for her bouquet. No details of these or of the
colours of other roses we were asked for were to be released until the wedding had taken place. A
nice secret to have to keep!’
It rained non-stop for days before the blooms were cut on 26 July. On Monday 27 July, Peter and
Joanna, Jack’s six year old grand-daughter, travelled to St Paul’s while Philip drove the Nursery lorry
and delivered hundreds of Anne Harkness and Margaret Merrill stems into the waiting hands of an
army of flower arrangers. Also in the lorry was Mountbatten for the bridal bouquet hidden from the
cameras that showed the lorry on the evening news.
On 29 July1981, Diana arrived at St. Paul’s in a glass coach in an ivory silk crinoline frock with
twenty-five foot train. Inside were 3500 distinguished guests. Outside, cheering crowds of two million,
4,000 police and 2,200 military officers. The wedding was the biggest outside broadcasting venture
ever undertaken. 750 million TV viewers in seventy-four countries saw the wedding, and, of course,
the Harkness Roses.
After the wedding Peter and his wife Margaret went to St. Paul’s to see their roses in all their
glory. Harkness sent the royal bride and groom five bushes of Mountbatten for their home, Highgrove.
The rose is also grown at Buckingham Palace in London, Royal Lodge, Windsor and Broadlands in
Hampshire, Lord Mountbatten’s old home.
The Earl’s daughter, the Countess of Mountbatten of Burma, officially launched Mountbatten at
the 1982 Chelsea Flower Show. Peter booked the prime time Press Day 10am slot. BBC TV asked
him to talk about the rose in a forty second piece direct to camera. There was no sign of the Countess
who was, fortuitously, still on the A2. Fortuitously, because instead of moving on to other stands, the

media waited at the Harkness stand until she arrived. Peter was gratified to see his piece to camera on
the BBC evening news unedited.

Earl Mountbatten had been President of SSAFA for twenty-five years so its publicity machine
went into overdrive to raise funds. It leafleted 1200 SSAFA branches and put the rose on Christmas
cards, silk scarves made in Italy and mass produced pottery roses. Orders for 400,000 budding eyes
poured in from nurserymen. The Mountbatten rose raised thousands for SSAFA. It proved so popular,
the rose trade ordered 216,585 ‘eyes’. Very healthy, it proved good for hedging, so local authorities
ordered it. The rose won Gold in Holland, France and Belgium, Rose of the Century in France, ten
other prizes and its Award of Merit was recorded in the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) updated list
in 1993.

Princess Michael of Kent

When the Lakeland Show Committee invited Princess Michael of Kent to open the 1979 Show it
asked Harkness to name a rose for her. Philip took her flowers of a promising looking yellow seedling
L105A for her approval. Commenting that she had never been described as a number before she wore
them in her hair at dinner and danced with Philip.

She, following usual practice, was asked to put in writing her permission to name the rose after
her. Following her usual practice she signed the letter Marie-Christine which the rose authorities
refused to accept until her solicitor wrote to them and confirmed that Marie Christine and Princess
Michael of Kent is one and the same person. Then the US Registration authorities refused to accept
the name because the ruling is three words only, not four. In the end they agreed that ‘of Kent’ could
on this occasion be treated as one word.

The rose Princess Michael of Kent was launched at 1981 Chelsea Flower Show. Whenever she
is at Chelsea she checks that her rose is on show. One year her husband Prince Michael asked for a
buttonhole of her rose so that he would be properly dressed when he joined the royal party for their
usual preview of the Show.

Born Baroness Marie Christine von Reibnitz, Princess Michael has published books on the royal
families of Europe. The Kent’s do not officially carry out royal duties, although they have represented
the Queen at functions abroad.

Prince Michael was born in 1942 at the family home in Iver, Buckinghamshire. One of his
godfathers was President Roosevelt of the USA. His father, Prince George, was the fourth son of
George V. His mother was Princess Marina, daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece. He is a cousin to
both The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh. His older brother and sister are The Duke of Kent and
Princess Alexandra. Prince Michael is not in the line of succession to the throne so receives no public
money. He runs his own consulting business.

Princess Alice

Philip Harkness, on duty at 1985 Chelsea Flower Show for the royal tour in the evening
presented HRH Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, with a rose named after her for three reasons.
The villagers of Barnwell where she lived first suggested it in 1981; in 1984 The Princess Helena
College in Preston not far from the Harkness Nursery thought it would be a nice gesture as Princess
Alice was Chairman of Governors; Princess Alice saved the day for Harkness concerning Q6,
HARquibbler, a rare persica hybrid.

When 1982 brought twenty degrees of severe frost, the roots of Q6 planted in 1976, froze in the
ground. Years of hard work disappeared overnight. Then Peter remembered he had given a Q6 plant
to Princess Helena College to present to Princess Alice, on an official visit. The college was once
Temple Dinsley a manor house where Robert Harkness Snr, planted a rose garden for Gertrude Jekyll
in the 1900s.

Peter wrote to Princess Alice at Barnwell Manor in Northamptonshire. Did she still have the rose
plant? Luckily, yes. When Peter visited HRH she showed him her lovely gardens before taking him to
Q6. Due to repairs being carried out on Barnwell Castle, Q6 was in a specially constructed protective
wooden cage. Peter managed to cut the bud wood.

Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (1901-2004) who was descended from Charles II, married
Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, son of George V. Her bridesmaids included her husband's niece
Princess Elizabeth (later HM Queen Elizabeth II).

During World War II, the Duchess worked with the Red Cross, the Order of St John and became
head of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). She was given the honorary title of Air Chief
Commandant WAAF and promoted to Air Chief Marshal in the Royal Air Force in 1990. She also
served as deputy to Queen Elizabeth, Queen Consort of George VI, as Commandant-in-Chief of the
Nursing Corps. She was the only woman appointed a Dame Grand Cross of the Most Honourable
Order of the Bath.

As a young woman, Princess Alice was an intrepid traveller. Once, disguised as a boy, she
smuggled herself into one of the forbidden areas of Afghanistan. She returned unscathed, but there
was a furore in official circles when news of her exploit leaked out.

In 1965 she and the duke had a bad motor accident. She was seriously injured; her husband,
who seemed at first to have escaped unscathed suffered a series of progressively more damaging
strokes and died in 1974. In 1972 their elder son, Prince William, was killed while piloting his plane in
the Goodyear air race.

Princess Alice moved from Barnwell Manor, which she and her husband bought in 1938. to
Kensington Palace in 1994.

Andrew, Duke of York

Harkness was asked to supply roses for the wedding of the Queen and Prince Philip’s second
son, Prince Andrew, Duke of York to Miss Sarah Ferguson in Westminster Abbey. On 23 July 1986
five hundred million worldwide saw Harkness roses on television.

Jane Packer became the first non By Appointment florist to make a Royal Bouquet when Sarah
Ferguson broke with tradition. The bouquet was an 'S' shaped spray of cream lilies, pale yellow roses,
gardenias, lilies-of-the-valley and the traditional sprig of myrtle.

Lady Rachel Bowes Lyon

1981 saw the introduction of a rose named for Lady Rachel Bowes Lyon, wife of David, the
Queen Mother’s brother. She and her husband were keen horticulturalists.

Rachel Spender Clay, daughter of Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Herbert Spender Clay and the Hon. Pauline
Astor, daughter of Viscount Astor, married Sir David Bowes-Lyon, son of Earl of Strathmore. Her
married name was Lady Bowes Lyon.

The Honourable Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, ninth child and youngest daughter of Earl of Strathmore,
spent much of her childhood at The Bury, St Paul’s Walden not far from the Harkness Nursery in
Hitchin. Born at The Bury, her adored brother David lived there for most of his life. During the war he
was in the SOE (Special Operations Executive) Churchill’s Secret Army. In 1941 he was at the British
embassy in Washington and New York and knew President Roosevelt. As Sir David Bowes Lyon
KCVO he was Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire (title dates from Henry VIII) the monarch's personal
representative in the County from 1952 until his death. President of the Royal Horticultural Society Sir
David organised a World Orchid Conference.

He died in 1961 of a heart attack while staying with his sister Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, in
Birkhall on the Balmoral estate. The funeral service was held in the local church at Ballater. The royal
family accompanied his coffin on the night train to London, on to Hitchin and St Paul’s Walden where
he was buried.

The Queen Mother often stayed at St. Paul’s Walden with David’s widow Rachel to whom she
was close. Lady Rachel did a lot of work for charity. In the 1960s, she and Mrs Doris Devenish of
Stevenage, whose husband John Devenish DFC was a RAF flight engineer on Special Duties for the
SOE during the war, successfully raised funds to build the Leonard Cheshire Home in Hitchin. This
was at a time when the disabled were rarely seen in public, hidden from mainstream society, not
talked about. Baron Cheshire VC, the youngest Group Captain in the RAF during WWII, laid the
foundation stone.

Lady Rachel died in 1996. Her son Simon Bowes Lyon, Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire 1986–
2007, lives at The Bury with his wife, Lady Caroline, a Professor of computer studies. The Queen
Mother visited him throughout her life. HM Queen Elizabeth 11 still visits her cousin. At the time of
writing (2012) Mrs Devenish, 94, still lives in Stevenage. She describes herself as a healthy wreck with
all her marbles.

Princess of Wales

In 1997 The British Lung Foundation asked Harkness to name a rose for its patron, The Princess
of Wales. Since her divorce the year before from the Prince of Wale, Diana was, technically, no longer
Princess of Wales. However, as the rose was to raise funds for charity, Buckingham Palace gave
permission.

Many roses all over the world are named after Princess Diana but this was the first. HARdinkum,
a fragrant white blend floribunda with double blooms, is the only rose she chose personally. White
roses were her favourite.

In May 1997 Robert and Philip presented the rose to Princess Diana to mark her ten years of
work for the Foundation. For each Princess of Wales rose sold, Harkness made a donation to the
charity. A few months later, on 31 August, she died in a car crash in the Pont de L' Alma tunnel in
Paris.

Demand for her rose outstripped supply by ten years. Harkness, which had to close its telephone
and fax lines, was asked to supply thousands of stems of her rose for her funeral in Westminster
Abbey on 6 September and for the famous, poignant, wreath with a card saying ‘To Mummy’ on her
coffin.

Diana's funeral, on Saturday 6 September, was broadcast live around the world to an audience of
two billion. Considerably larger than that of her wedding, it was one of the most watched events in
history. More than one million lined the route from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey; the
service was relayed to huge crowds on screens in Hyde Park. As the hearse drove along the route out
of London to the motorway to Northamptonshire, the mourners paid their last respects and Diana left
London along a road strewn with flowers.

Diana is buried at Althorp Park, her childhood home. Her grave, on an island in an ornamental
lake known as The Round Oval, is visited in privacy by her sons. A path with thirty-six oak trees,
marking each year of her life, leads to the lake where black swans swim. In the water are water lilies,
which, along with white roses, were Diana's favourite flowers. On the southern verge of The Round
Oval, a summerhouse, previously in the gardens of Admiralty House, London, serves as a memorial.
An arboretum is nearby with trees planted by Diana, William and Harry.

Princes William and Harry, celebrated the 46th anniversary of their mother's birth a few weeks
before the 10th anniversary of her death by organising a concert at Wembley Arena.