The Tea Rose that I admire with great affection is the beautiful apricot rose Anna Olivier, bred by Ducher in France, 1872. The apricot colour in roses has always been attractive to me, and as luck would have it Mr F Cant of Colchester in England, found a darker richer apricot shaded sport in 1902, giving me a second rose to love.

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I have found several roses with the name of Lady Roberts that I believe to be correctly named. One of these roses was collected by Sally Allison, who found it growing in an old French settlement from the1840’s named Akaroa, in the South Island of New Zealand. Another Lady Roberts was found growing in Dunedin with the study name of St. David's Street Rose. This intriguing detective work was researched by Fiona Hyland who found that one of these roses was an original planting of Lady Roberts.

The colour of Anna Olivier’s petals are a range of apricot, but occasional clear lemon blooms are scattered through the flower sprays, giving just a hint of the instability of colour consistency, however the Lady Roberts from New Zealand would seem to be stable and does not revert.