New Zealand: Rose breeder celebrates 70th anniversary
It all began with Bob's parents, Tom and Pearl, back in 1947. Tom's training at Rasmussen's nursery in Whanganui was interrupted by service in World War II. When he came back after the war he set up his own small nursery where he grew "anything to create an income," Bob recalls. As time went on, Tom began to specialise in roses.
When Bob was still a child, he was expected to help with the nursery work, of which there was plenty. Even back in the 1950s, plants were delivered all over New Zealand, and Bob has a vivid memory of when he was about nine years old: there would be a single light in the packing shed and Bob would be called from his bed to help his father sew up the hessian bundles of plants, working well into the midnight hours.
When his father retired, Bob turned to other rural occupations – cropping, driving, felling trees – but all the while he never stopped propagating a few roses.
But when he met and married Cath things changed. With her help and insistence, he was able to acquire land and begin to grow roses on a commercial level.
Read more at Stuff.co.nz
