Rosa Mrs Fred Danks

Matthew Dolley • Jul 07, 2023

Yet another Alister Clark Rose worth talking about

This is a beautiful rose, it can be grown as a large shrub or as a pillar. It can have short stems and 12-18 petals per bloom but is heavily fragranced and very disease resistant. We are unsure of its parentage as it was probably bred much earlier than it was released in 1951 and with Alisters passing lots of details were lost. Susan Irvine collected this rose from Tid Alston and Eve Murray. This rose has a massive spring flush but does bloom almost all year in mild climates.


Alister named so any of the roses he bred after the women in his life, 'Mrs Fred Danks' was a lady named Dorothy Twiston Williams and married Fred Danks in 1923, he was a keen plant breeder but not a gardener and that's where Dorothy came into the mix, she loved gardening and combining her husbands plants into a beautiful garden. Alister visited their garden several times per year bringing with him some of his latest daffodils and roses.


David Danks one of Dorothy's sons believed that the naming of the rose was because of Alister's admiration of her garden design and enthusiasm for displaying the plants that her husband was breeding. The rose was registered in 1951 two years after Alister's death in 1949, Dorothy enjoyed her rose for many years till she passed in 1974.



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