Canada: Geneticist who created Explorer Roses dies
During her 33-year tenure at the government-run Central Experimental Farm, in Ottawa, she created a collection of blooms – named after explorers – that thrived in Canada’s rose-unfriendly climate and are still grown here and all over the world.
“The Explorer Roses are Canada’s greatest contribution to the world of roses,” the Canadian Rose Society declares on its website.
Ms. Svejda, who died in Ottawa on Jan. 19 at the age of 95 from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, innovated throughout her career. She had to: When she started to work with roses in 1961, the available varieties of these delicate blooms could not survive outside of Canada’s balmiest locales, such as Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula and the B.C. coast.
“In order to be hardy, you have to get your blooming done with and start protecting. To be floriferous, you have to produce further growth that will have a rose on it, and further growth [beyond that],” says Harry McGee, a London, Ont.-based amateur rose cultivator who was a long-time friend of Ms. Svejda. “She was faced with a big, capital-B, capital-I, capital-G challenge to find a rose that would do essentially totally different things.”
Read more at The Globe and Mail
