- By the Landscape/Rose Committee -
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Nine-year-old William Radler fought boredom at his grandmother’s home by looking through the rose catalogs. He was captivated by the various shapes and colors of the roses.
He took his allowance and went to the local A&P to purchase his first rose for 49-cents. William still remembers the bloom of his first rose. “The first bud exploded into the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen and it was fragrant.” William soon transformed his parents’ backyard into a beautiful showplace of roses.
It didn’t take him long to realize that growing and caring for roses entailed a lot of work. He had about 200 roses and used 18 different sprays to prevent disease and pests. He says, “I wanted to breed the maintenance out of roses.”
At age 17, he joined the Milwaukee North Shore Rose Society. At his first rose show, he won the sweepstakes for having the most blue ribbons. He started thinking about creating a new kind of rose that wouldn’t require chemical spraying and winter protection.
After 15 years of trial and error, one of his hybridized roses stood out as exceptional—the
Knock Out. In 2000, it was given the prestigious All American Rose Selection award.
Knock Out has become the best selling new rose on the market with over 250,000 sold in the first year and now over five million sold every year.
It is a humble shrub rose with less than ten petals and very little fragrance, but it tidies itself up after blooming, eliminating the need for heavy pruning and doesn’t need dead-heading.
You can see some Knock Out roses here at La Costa Glen in a new planting beside the new Catalina Patio. It will be fun to watch them grow.