Rose Breeding

Easy Elegance’s internationally recognized rose hybridizer, Ping Lim, is at the heart of the collection’s success. He personally oversees close to 25,000 crosses made annually, and stands behind them with a 2-yr homeowner guarantee.

The Easy Elegance® roses was born out of a desire to change perceptions about roses. They are no longer difficult plants that require the use of chemicals to keep them healthy. Now they are hardy, own-root, disease-resistant shrubs that bloom all season long.

There are no chemicals used in the Easy Elegance breeding or evaluation programs. In fact, in the seedlings' first year they’re sprayed with a mixture of powdery mildew, black spot and other disease spores to eliminate any roses that show signs of disease. Only graduates of the program become Easy Elegance roses.

Creating a commercially successful rose breeding program relies on teamwork within the department and the nursery as a whole. The team is busy year-round with pollination, selection, field evaluation, hip harvesting and processing, digging, packing, organizing seed and breeding material, pruning, pinching, planting and recording endless amounts of data. A staggering 35,000 crosses are made each year. Ping describes it as putting together the pieces of a perfect puzzle.