We've ever been curious how so many different varieties of really any plant vegetables, flowers, roses are actually created and this episode is going to be really interesting for you.

We have Rebecca Karate, back on the show. She's a horticulturist at David Austin Roses. She provides a lot of retail, technical support across the USA and Canada, but also has a good grip on the process of how all of these different varieties are actually created.

Rebecca, I think for a lot of listeners, it's sort of a black box of how these things come to be. So I'm curious, what is the breeding process for getting a new rose variety out there?

It's a very long process. It can take 9 to 10 years. So you have to be a very patient person. And with all of the wonderful gardening that has taken place during COVID, a lot of people ran out of plants.

And they're like, well, just make more. And for those of us who are in the industry, you know that even if you have a variety developed, just putting it in the ground like a rose when it's propagated and put in our fields and grown out per sale, that takes two years.

So you can't just Amazon it and make it happen. You know, the other thing that's kind of interesting is, you know, we really were steeped in history that Mr. Austin had created. He did everything by hand. He cross pollinated.

Everything was done with a paintbrush and we were contacted by genetics companies all the time saying, hey, we can make this a lot faster for you.

And Mr. Austin just really didn't understand that. He only wanted to do what he understood. So everything was done by hand.

Mr. Austin passed away December 2018. And you know, he truly led his life in full bloom. He did what he wanted to, but we had tremendous amount of questions going what's going to happen to the breeding program.

Are you going to continue? You know, is David Austin Rose is going away? Absolutely not. We are very much focused on what Mr. Austin's intent was and moving forward.

And Carl Bennett, who he mentored since Carl was probably 18 years old and worked with for 30 years.

He's new Mr. Austin's thoughts more than anyone. And he is continuing the breeding program and the entire horticultural team is really there to make sure that legacy continues.

Just to give you an idea of what happens in this nine year period, the entire process of creating new David Austin roses takes nine to 10 years.

That is roughly 120,000 development roses. So in the first year, two parent roses are selected and they are cross pollinated by hand.

Because that's what Mr. Austin understood. Then about this time of year in the spring, 350,000 cross pollinated seeds are planted in our greenhouses in England.

And they are grown out. They are observed meticulous records are kept and about 15,000 for, excuse me, about 15,000 are selected and moved out into our trial fields.

And there they are assessed for five years. It's kind of crazy. That's wild. Just for those listening, the sense of patience and scale here just to get a variety out is it's so impressive.

Right. And so the entire time you're doing this, you're having to do the next year and the next year while keeping those meticulous records.

So each year, the selection is narrowed until there are only about 10 seedling varieties that remain. And once they whittle it down to those 10 varieties, they plant roughly 75 hundred of each variety.

And then it is grown out and we can really go, is there something there that we don't like? Is this what we are really intent on bringing to market?

And I always have to remind folks, it's not about the biggest flower, the most fragrant flower, the highest pedal count. It's about quality.

It's about being consistent and repeat. It's about having that fragrance there, having the disease resistance there, which has become even more important because so many areas of the country and the world don't use chemicals anymore or limited chemicals.

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