Prestigious rose grower calls his new bloom for a black gardener
For over 60 years, David Austin Roses has been growing the world’s most prestigious flowers. It’s the Air Jordans, the Birkin bags, the Steinway pianos of roses, and have become what we know, smell and enjoy as the modern English rose.
And for more than 60 years, David Austin Roses has named one or two new varieties each year after historical British figures, including Queen Elizabeth II, Emily Brontë, Roald Dahl and Charles Darwin. Until this year, those people were all white.
Take a deep sniff of the Dannahue.
At the Chelsea Flower Show in London last month, David Austin Roses introduced the dannahuean apricot-colored English shrub rose named after Danny Clarke, a gardener he knew social media followers and for television viewers in Great Britain as the Black Gardener. The shrub is currently only available in the UK, but will be available to US gardeners next year.
Mr Clarke, whose full first name is Dannahue, went from relative obscurity to a BBC gardener on “The Instant Gardener” almost a decade ago, and has since become a leading voice for expanding the accessibility of green spaces. In addition to running a private garden design company, Mr. Clarke is a designer for Grow to knowthat teaches young people in underprivileged communities how to garden.
“Anyone can garden,” Mr Clarke said in an interview from his garden in Bromley, a neighborhood in south-east London. “It’s something that’s intrinsic.”
Now Mr. Clarke hopes the rose named in his honor will give other gardeners of color the confidence to connect with nature in an environment they might otherwise have thought was off limits to them.
“When they see me with an award like this, and they see me get my hands in the ground and maybe visit beautiful gardens and be part of the countryside,” Mr Clarke said, “they think, if he can do it, why can’t I isn’t it?”
The Dannahue has been in development for 12 years, the average growing time for David Austin Roses.
David Austin released his first rose in 1961, Constance Spry, named after a British writer and floral artist. lifetime. His son David Austin Jr. now runs David Austin Roses.
Mr. Clarke was selected to have a variety of rose named after him after David Austin Jr. that Mr. Clarke had seen on display at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2022. With Tayshan Hayden-Smith, the founder of Grow To Know, Mr. Clarke had designed a garden inspired by global deforestation and social injustice. The two took home the silver medal.
“What David Austin has done beautifully is transforming that old-fashioned flower shape and fragrance into a modern re-blooming shrub,” says Peter Kukielski, a rosarian and former curator of the New York Botanical Garden. “Who doesn’t want that?”
Mr. Kukielski said he looks forward to explaining the origins of the Dannahue.
“A lot has been put on a pedestal regarding this plant,” he said of roses. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have the diversity of plant names as well. I am very happy and applaud that they have done this.
David Austin Roses usually releases about two varieties each year – another is expected next month – after selecting and hybridizing two parent roses by hand cross-pollinating about 40,000 seeds. In the end, about 350,000 seedlings are produced; 150,000 of these undergo rigorous field trials for about five years, until two come out for commercial release.
“We make sure we grow roses that naturally have all the charm, beauty and elegance of an English rose,” said Kirsty Fleetwood, head of brand and content at David Austin Roses. “They are resistant to disease, have good vigor and are something that can be grown in today’s ecosystem.”
According to David Austin Roses, Dannahue is a versatile rose that can grow in sun or shade, in containers on a balcony or along hedges in an expansive green space, and in multiple soil types. It’s also great for pollinators.
It is essentially sending “the exact same message” as Mr Clarke, Mrs Fleetwood said.
“We need to make gardening accessible and inclusive, and for that we need to produce roses that can thrive in any space and that anyone can grow,” she said.
And then there’s the smell.
“I can smell a bit of licorice in the scent, but it’s very subtle, it’s not in your face,” Mr Clarke said. “You have to get close to smell it.”
Mr. Clarke was born in Oxford to Jamaican immigrants and had an itinerant childhood. Whenever his family moved to a new home, his father, who served in the British Army, would send Mr. Clarke to the garden to acclimate him to his new surroundings.
“It was probably a chore,” he said, “but the roots have been sown.”
Once he was older and had his own garden to tend to, Mr. Clarke’s childhood memories of being outside came back.
He eventually traded a sales job for a pair of garden shears. In 2014, he renamed himself the Black Gardener to highlight the lack of diversity in his industry, a problem he said traced back to slavery, when working the land was considered degrading.
“I’m on a mission to change that and change that perspective,” he said. “In the end, nature is a right, not a privilege.”
His message has been heard loud and clear.
Izwe Nkosi, a black home grower in the south of England, a longtime collector of David Austin Roses and a huge fan of Mr. Clarke, ordered the Dannahue rose as soon as it became available, and documented its arrival in great shape on TikTok.
“It’s a big thing for me,” he said in a Zoom interview from his yard. “To see it done by someone who looks like me — he’s got hair like me, he talks pretty much like me.” And I can show it to my girls.
Mr Nkosi said Mr Clarke has provided a blueprint for creating “amazing spaces” in an affordable and accessible way “for poor people like me.”
Most of the 30 or so roses in Mr. Nkosi’s small garden are David Austin roses, including the Emily Brontë, Strawberry Hill And Gabriel Oak varieties. Now the Dannahue takes center stage.
“When you smell it, it literally invades your being,” he said. “When you’re having a terrible day, you just want to smell it and chill.”