You don't have to be a Sam McGredy to breed your own roses, Gillian Vine learns.
The most exciting thing about rose breeding is you never know what you're going to get, say George and Dawn Agnew.
The Mosgiel couple have been breeding roses since 1999, among them Julia's Baby and Dusky Julia.
The two unusually coloured roses came from the same hip and were a cross between Julia's Rose and Spek's Centennial.
Julia's Rose is notoriously difficult to grow well but its two offspring are both very healthy.
The Agnews are not professional horticulturists. Although keen members of the Otago Rose Society, they class themselves as "very much amateurs", despite the beauty and variety of the roses they have bred.
"Anyone can do it," Dawn says, by saving rosehips and sowing the seed in pots.
They sow theirs outside in August and usually have little plants flowering in December or January. Those first flowers are small but show the all-important colour.
Most new roses are grown from seed and commercial growers will produce tens of thousands of seedlings each year in the quest for a marketable plant but there is another way of getting new roses.
Dawn points to a pink rose that produced a "sport", a stem with a lemon-yellow flower.
The stem was tagged and then snipped off and grown separately to keep the yellow form. Some roses are more prone to throw sports.
Another Rose Society member regularly finds pink flowers on her white David Austin rose Winchester Cathedral, saying they are a throwback to Mary Rose, one of Winchester Cathedral's parents.
Waikouaiti's Bruce Paul started breeding roses about seven years ago when he lived in Auckland.
"I fly by the seat of my pants," the down-to-earth Bruce says.
Above all, he wants perfume in his roses.
"What's the first thing people do with a rose? Sniff it. I believe we've bred the perfume out of too many of our new roses."
