The History of Find That Rose
created and edited by Angela Pawsey

Find That Rose! has now passed its 25th Birthday, and the 26th Edition is now available. The Multiple Sclerosis Society was adopted for the 25th Edition and raised around £280 to help this worthy cause. Over many years there has been a feature on the origins of rose names, and in more recent years this has concentrated on Charity roses. Due to popular demand a booklet combining these articles and adding further roses will be available from July 2008 (to order see Request For Brochure on this site.)

Now if you read on you will learn how Find That Rose! came about. Even after all these years the Rose Industry, Press, Garden Centres and Landscapers and many members of the general public still value the printed page. This website has helped introduce a new audience to “Find That Rose!” but it is only contains the basic part of the book which is to help find a particular variety and grower(s). To get the complete deal then go to Request a Brochure.

If it hadn’t been for a discussion on a train journey between two fellow rose growers Peter Harkness and Mark Mattock, maybe Find That Rose! would never have been conceived.  

For a few years I had Annually produced for the National Rose Festival (held then at the Garden of The Rose home of the Royal National Rose Society  Garden of The Rose St Albans) a small booklet which helped visitors find which of the exhibiting growers grew the roses displayed in the marquee. Peter and Mark approached me suggesting I extended the booklet to cover all retail members. My family thought I was mad to agree.  I was!

The first Edition of Find that Rose was launched at the 1983 Rose Festival. The way I created this now seems very antiquated. It was duplicating machine to the ready. I devised a “stencil” sheet with space for variety and all growers’ codes. From Growers information I marked the sheets when they listed a specific variety. As three letter codes for the Festival prototype had been used for each exhibitor this was adopted for Find That Rose.  From folders of alphabetical varieties I carefully typed the information onto pages. The Printer then shrunk, photocopied, and bound the booklet. To add colour Burton McCall (of Secateurs fame) sponsored the front cover of (un-named) “Just Joey” which became the world favourite rose in 1994. Now days the front cover is sponsored by Roses U.K. the marketing body of the U.K. Rose Industry, and features the current Rose of The Year, together with a preview of the following  Rose of The Year Sponsorship from various Breeders has helped to include more photos.

The aims of Find That Rose was, and remains, to help people find a particular rose, guide people to British Rose Grower Association members and promote British Grown roses.  We wished to encourage the Press to write about roses.  By using Find That Rose we hope they would refrain from promoting varieties, which were not readily available.

We had positive Press coverage for the first Edition - the first U.K. horticultural “finder” book.  A copy cost 25p with the purchaser providing a suitable large S.A.E.  Sales were good, in fact on one day I received 500 envelopes.  A sister publication for wholesale suppliers had a disappointing reception. Soon wholesalers were added to Find That Rose and a number was added to growers codes to indicate type of grower. Conventional printing was adopted and after listening to growers and readers more information added. Varieties are now listed with classification, basic colour and fragrance.  Titbits have been added; the most popular helps find Christian names in roses

My “spare time” from Christmas to mid May is devoted to the creation of the next Edition. I progressed from marking previous editions, adding new varieties, grower etc. to a word processor.  Imagine what a state I was in when one year my obsolete word processors drive failed and other word processors/computers could not “read” the discs. The relief that just in the nick of time a new drive was found and fitted. Today I have a computer and supply the designer the variety information on disc.

Find That Rose is not readily available at Chelsea which is now the time scale for publication. Copies are sold from the Royal Horticultural Enterprise shop within Chelsea. Gone are the days when we were able to sell  thousands of copies from the British Association of Representing Breeder’s stand. After they ceased exhibiting copies were openly available from BRGA Chelsea exhibitors. Then came the shocking news Find That Rose! was to be treated like a top shelf magazine! The RHS banned us from displaying copies on our individual members stands; we could only sell them from under the “counter”! This considerably hit sales.

We depend on good publicity and direct sales, as we have been unable to persuade Bookshops, Garden Centres etc. to stock copies. If we could turn the clock back then we should have approach a publisher and then they could have marketed it.  Find That Rose would have been more expensive but there would be far fewer frustrated prospective customers. I constantly receive letters from people who cannot understand why Find That Rose is so difficult to find and purchase.

What now?  Well Find That Rose! is now 24 years old. My desire is to see that it still remains the authentic guide to who grows what in the U.K. Rose Industry.  Ss to the web originally I had anticipated the Rose Industry would develop the basic variety and growers section for a more elaborate site, however this has not happened. I do despair at misleading Internet sites, which give hope to searchers by listing extinct varieties. Varieties come and go, as do grower. So I am making this Find That Rose site as well as creating the Annual hard copy. I cannot  not guarantee that every single variety available in the U.K. is here but at least 95% varieties are!  I am  confident that this is the most comprehensive “ U.K. rose finder site”.

There are still too many new varieties with unattractive selling names as regretfully some Breeders are unaware of the importance of names. Equally the new trend to re-brand classifications is confusing to the buyer.  I receive many letters on this and names. On a positive note I am sure that Find That Rose! has influenced the growing trend of varieties to celebrate various occasions. This business I am confident will continue to grow. Find That Rose remains all about names. Names invoking memories, and dreams of roses to come.

DID YOU KNOW …. A FEW “Find That Rose!” facts and figures

• The first Edition was published in 1983 and included 40 retail      Growers and approximately 1250 varieties
• The twenty-fourth Edition published May 2006 includes 51 Growers and approximately 3450 varieties
• The firstly Edition had 32 Pages; the twenty-fourth 86 pages
• Of the 40 Growers listed in the first edition only 16 feature in the 24th Edition
• The largest number of Growers listed in an edition was 73
•  In the early days only Retail Growers were included. The inclusion of wholesale growers prompted the need to add a figure to the three - letter grower code.
• Except for the 1st Edition which illustrated “Just Joey” all other covers have featured the current Rose of The YearÔ
• Initially only the name and type of rose was indicated with the Growers code.
• A colour code was later created, and even later stills a fragrance indicator.
• To help people find a rose with a particular Christian name a cross - reference was created.
• The number of New varieties in each Edition averages around the 170  mark. Each Edition also sees the disappearance of around 150  varieties. Some re-appear in later Editions. Particularly in the last few  years around 25% of the variety and growers information changes in  each Edition.
• Find That Rose formed a major membership attraction to The British Rose Growers Association, with members having free entry into Find That Rose.
• In 2000 The British Rose Growers Association became a trading group within the Horticultural Trades Association, and at this time Find That Rose became an independent publication. Members of the British Rose Growers Association still supports the publication and members      still have free entry into Find That Rose.