Coming up roses

The sight of row upon row of roses in bloom at Whartons nurseries in Norfolk is even more magnificent than the tulip fields of Holland. Charles Quest-Ritson looks behind the scenes at our largest rose producer

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WHARTONS ROSES is the biggest rose producer in the British Isles. Its growing fields on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk are a joy to see when they reach the peak of their flower power in late July.

Whartons supplies many of the best rose nurseries and almost all Britain's garden centres, but the company is not a household name because it is a wholesaler, not a retailer.

It produces 1.5 million garden roses every year and its choice of varieties determines what retailers offer and gardeners buy.

The heyday for roses was the middle of the 20th century. They were planted in vast numbers -50 or 100 of only one variety-in public parks and large private gardens, often as a cheap substitute for traditional summer bedding. British nurseries produced more than 50 million rose bushes every year and the Royal National Rose Society had 121,000 members more than the RHS at that time.

Now, the number of roses sold annually in Britain is down to five million, the RHS has a membership of more than 600,000 and the old Royal National Rose Society is defunctit went into administration in 2017.

Whartons Roses was founded in the postwar bonanza years and, unlike so many famous rose names McGredy, Dickson, Mattock and Cants the firm has survived and flourished.

The Wharton family were farmers and it helps to think of roses as a two-year crop. Each year's crop needs 65 acres, which means that 130 acres are always in production, but then the fields cannot be re-used for roses for about 10 years after they are lifted. As the Whartons actually own no more than 350 acres, they have to lease the extra land from neighbouring farmersan arrangement that works well for all parties.