(Text borrowed from an article by Rayford Reddell published in the San Francisco Chronicle, September 1, 1999.)

For nearly two decades, David Austin of  Albrighton, England, has dominated the scene of something- for-everyone rose varieties. His "English Roses" have become almost as popular in the United States as they are in Britain. Meanwhile,  Austin's fiercest European rivals, the houses of Meilland and Guillot, were busily at work hybridizing roses just across the English Channel.

Jacques Mouchotte of the illustrious French House of Meilland in Le Luc en Provence was no upstart.  He had hybridized several great roses: the  All-America Rose `Carefree Delight,' a landscape rose of exceptional beauty, and `Summer's Kiss,' soft apricot Hybrid Tea that smells distinctly of anise.

Then Mouchotte hybridized `Polka,' a climber that took the western United States, particularly California, by storm. Not only were its fragrant, soft-apricot, frilly blossoms appealing, but so was the vigorous, disease-resistant plant on which they flowered.

Such successes surely pleased Mouchotte, but he was haunted by a rose that he introduced in 1984 named `Yves Piaget.' Although he recognized it was beyond routine classification, to get it into commerce and test its marketability Mouchotte classed `Yves Piaget' as a Hybrid Tea. It caused an immediate sensation among French gardeners.

Mouchotte couldn't drive the image of what he had created out of his mind and believed that `Piaget' might be the first of a new line of roses for the Meilland empire to promote. The House of Meilland produces more than 12 million rosebushes a year and exports through a 42-country network.

Mouchotte declared `Yves Piaget' the first of a new breed of roses to be called ``Romantica'' and set about hybridizing similar new varieties in an array of colors. Adamant that new crosses be both well perfumed and hardy, he progressed slowly, creating only seven new varieties in the next decade.

One reason the new hybrids came slowly was Mouchotte didn't simply want them to be fragrant, he also wanted their perfumes analyzed -- information the House of Meilland intended to pass on to the public. Working with perfume experts in Grasse, a major center for scent extraction, the Meilland team asked fragrance pros to identify the predominating scent in each of the entries into the Romantica series.

Through Star Roses, a company formed jointly by Meilland Roses and Conard-Pyle, the American firm with whom the French have enjoyed a long association, `Yves Piaget' and his seven siblings have been gradually introduced to the United States during the past few years, but only in limited commerce.

The following pages contain photos and details the garden performance of the Romantica and Generosa roses I grow.

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