Ready For Showtime

As Hitchin’s Harkness Roses prepares for the biggest flower show in the world, Philippa Pearson goes behind the scenes to find out what it takes to be a medal-winning exhibitor.

- Philippa Pearson

HELD in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London since 1913, RHS Chelsea Flower Show is the world’s most prestigious plant show and Harkness Roses has exhibited there nearly every year since the event began. In the last 50 years, Harkness has won Gold more than 25 times.

The Harkness family has been breeding roses since 1879, moving to Hitchin from Yorkshire in the 1950s. In its early days, garden designer extraordinaire Gertrude Jekyll was a prominent customer and Harkness is renowned throughout the world for breeding reliable roses with outstanding flowering performance, good disease resistance and that are suitable for all types of garden requirements. Breeding roses is not for the faint-hearted though, it takes several years from selecting promising ‘parent’ plants to the production of a new rose, and the painstaking process involves many hurdles along the way. Chelsea is the main event in the gardening calendar for new plants to be launched, and this year Harkness is planning to introduce at least three roses at the show. But it’s not all about showing new plants, Harkness displays many of its varieties at Chelsea, creating a living catalogue of its flowers.