Simon, I am astonished that a nursery would even bother to graft something like Bracteata… why bother?
Most Austin roses set easily hips. The only infertile cultivar is for me Anne Boleyn (no hips; pollen was very little and did not work)
In 2009 I had 33 op seedlings of Snow Goose (those that flowered were not really exciting).
Teasing Georgia was pollen parent of 12 seedlings germinating in 2008. Four of them produced flowers in 2008. Two other plants followed with flowers in 2009. All of them are remontant. TG produced some nice offspring, but it could do with some extra resistence genes against blackspot. But I guess the latter is true for all Austins.
Andrea, If I’m not mistaken, the Mayflower Rose is sterile- I’ve grown it for about 6 yrs. and never have seen a hip form. And I don’t think it even produces viable pollen. I may have had it in to warm a place(it doesn’t like the heat) but the fragrance is definitely something to select for. It comes the closest to a patch of roses my father had when I was a child! so I had to get it. It was supposed to be totally disease free, which until the Downy Mildew hit, it was. Now it is history.
Geoff Hamilton seems to have major issues setting hips (looks mechanical to me) and rarely has any pollen to give. I think I got a few seedlings from its pollen by being super creative =/
It is too bad. It has nice architecture for an English rose. I wanted to try to breed it into floribundas for its scent and form.
“Have you tried Joyce Barden in breeding, and if so what have you noticed it can or can’t do?”
I plan on working with her next year so Paul would be better equipped to answer this question. (I plan on crossing it with some of my other fragrant yellows.)
…well Paul???
"Simon, I am astonished that a nursery would even bother to graft something like Bracteata… why bother?
"
To make it a little easier to handle in the garden. The roots, even in my potted one, showed tennacity. Grafting it would help to prevent this to some extent so long as touch-downs were prevented. This is also why they graft things like rugosa and laevigata…
Simon, do bracteata roots sucker? I have no idea about this.
See link below. This is where I learnt of it not long ago too.
Link: rosehybridizers.org/forum/message.php?topid=23246&rc=28&ui=2440586022
BTW, I decided to keep Golden Celebration just a tad longer, and give it a fairer chance to do better by mulching it. It is sitting in hot sandy soil at the moment, baking in the intense afternoon sun, and experiencing temerature swings of 20 degrees celcius to 37 degrees celsius (last week). I should have already mulched ages ago, but I have just been too lazy. Mulching it may hopefully reduce the blackspot load enough for me to justify using it in breeding. I do love it of course!
If this does not improve matters, I will shovel prune it and forget about it altogether as a breeder in my climate.
Jon mentioned Heritage. I would not recommend Heritage. It forms tons of hips but has terrible germination in my experience. Abraham Darby is the only other Austin rose I have used extensively. It sets hips easily but germination is spotty. A very long cold stratification (4+ months) improved AD’s germination rate.
Hertitage even mildews here, which is a bad sign.
The virused ‘Mary Rose’ specimen that I returned to the grower also showed powdery mildew on the stem just below several flower buds. In my mind’s eye, I could just imagine a few hand pollinations going nowhere with fungus damage to hips that may have developed. I refuse to spray chemicals.
In my climate I am definitely not a fan of Mary Rose after that experience, and am happy to see the back of it.
It’s funny you should mention the lack of germinability of ‘Heritage’. Mine developed loads of OP hips and since I had no plans on using ‘Heritage’ for anything, and I already had enough OP hips I was testing, I threw them in the mulch around the base of the parent plant. This spring I noticed a bunch of seedlings appearing around the base of the plant. Seems it germinates like a weed here. I also grow ‘Nahema’, a Delbard using ‘Heritage’ as a parent, and it seems to me to be an improvement on ‘Heritage’ in every way; it grows cleanly for me, it’s a vigorous climber, it sets loads of OP hips, it is more double, it doesn’t shatter when you breathe on it, it is quite floriferous (especially so for a climber) with intense heady perfume, and it produces loads of pollen. I picked a handfull of its OP hips last season and sowed about 300 seeds from it. None have yet germinated. I want to try Mons. Tillier on it this year if I can get mine to flower or get pollen from somewhere. OP ‘Abraham Darby’ has also had poor germination for me here too. I will still use it but will leave it in the fridge longer this year as well. Out of about 100 OP seeds sown I have only managed to get two germinations from it so far. Paul has mentioned somewhere though that the seeds from AD do take longer than normal to germinate so I’ll just leave the tray and see what happens over the year or even next year. ‘Pegasus’ produces lots of OP hips for me, though again, none have germinated for me yet. It is also clean here and grows strongly and is one of my favourite roses. I pollinated ‘Othello’ with ‘Safrano’ this year… ‘Othello’ produces very little pollen for me though what little it does produce is dehisced freely. ‘Mary Rose’ is worthwhile as a parent here IMO. It produces OP hips freely, the seedlings germinate easily and show strong growth. It accepts a wide range of pollens for me. I’ve pollinated ‘Mary Rose’ with ‘Safrano’ and ‘Mutabilis’ so far this season and hope these will be successful. ‘Mary Rose’ grows well in my no-spray garden being almost evergreen, flowering into winter and after nearly three years has formed a bush about 3ft tall and wide… maybe a little sparse in the leaf department though this could also be because I don’t pamper my roses. I wish it grew branches from further down the bush and was less upright. I’d really like to try ‘Constance Spry’. A friend of mine here has put ‘Fortune’s Double Yellow’ pollen onto ‘Benjamin Britten’ and has seedlings… I think this sounds like an awesome cross. Others on my wish-list to try include ‘Scepter’d Isle’ and ‘Grace’. In the 2009 DA catalogue it shows a new release called ‘The Wedgewood Rose’ that they’ve classified as an ‘English Hybrid Musk’ (must be great to just make new classes up like that 
Gonna do the same here… from now on all my seedlings will be ‘Australian Roses’ and varieties will be ‘Australian English Hybrid Musk Giganteas’…). It looks interesting and they claim it to be, “…insofar as we can tell, almost completely free of disease - something that can be said of only a very few roses…” (LOL). Betcha my black spot would make it weak-at-the-knees. Has anyone grown, or even tried ‘Wild Edric’? It looks to be a hybrid rugosa (English Hybrid Rugosa I should say…). I haven’t looked at it on HMF yet.
Simon,
Regarding ‘Wild Edric’, I have grown it for one season at the Devonian Botanic Garden. The mauve-pink flowers are very large (10 cm. diameter) but they are not floriferous (as one can see in one of the HMF photos). From what I can see to date, the shrub also hasn’t got very good architecture. I doubt it is also fully cold hardy to a Zone 3 climate. Of course in your climate, you wouldn’t be concerned about that. It’s disappointing that David Austin Roses doesn’t list its parentage (seedling x seedling) more accurately.
Simon,
Your experience with Heritage is very interesting. Maybe I gave up on it too soon. I tried it for three years with probably 500-1000 seeds each year and got maybe 2% germination. Maybe I will try some open pollinated seeds and leave them outdoors in a pot over the winter and see if that helps. Heritage is probably my favorite rose. I would love to use it more in hybridizing.
Going back to the original post, I forgot to mention that Mary Rose has been a good seed parent for me (good seed set, good germination). Despite some reports on the contrary, I have always found it to be deliciously fragrant. The fragrance is not as strong as say Heritage, but it is definitely fragrant. I stopped using it because it is very prone to blackspot and it is far too thorny for my taste. However, I think it has a lot of potential if crossed with the right things.
Shane
I like to work with first generation crosses that combine the “best of the best” of widely different breeding lines.
In the first example (Carefree Beauty X Heritage).
http://home.roadrunner.com/~kuska/carefreeBeautyXHeritage.htm
In a second example (Heritage X William Baffin).
Henry,
Your Heritage crosses seem great. How have they turned out?
Shane
Any experiences with William Shakespeare 2000?
Mike Lowe introduced a (Heritage X William Baffin) rose, see:
I have not introduced any of my Heritage crosses. They do not bloom enough to be competative.
David Austin used to be very open with respect to the parentage of his cultivars. This changed probably due to increasing competition in the romantic roses section. His early books on his roses give all parentages.