The Magic of Plant Breeding

When I was a young thing in my twenties, I spent some time in a lowly position in plant breeding and we worked on producing better cauliflower varieties. Each cauliflower in the field, and there were thousands of them to assess, was individually scored for depth of curd, colour and rice-like quality. The latter was not a good trait, by the way. I still find myself scoring a tray of cauliflowers in the supermarket now, some fifty years later, because it was so much a part of my life.

My plant breeding years made me appreciate the laborious selection and breeding process, literally picking the best and then raising subsequent generations thereafter. You needed a very good eye for one thing and it was mega time consuming for another, but very necessary for commercial growers and gardeners alike. The process is the same in the ornamental plant world. There are dedicated breeders who spend years producing the perfect product for us to grow. They are the Harry Potters of the plant world, weaving their special brand of magic. They don’t do it for the glory. These men, and they are mainly men, do it for the love of plants.

One plant breeder I especially admire is the Cambridgeshire based David Kerley. He works with Priscilla, his wife, and they’ve been joined by their son Tim and his wife Sarah. It’s a family business with a Christian ethos and the third generation, Tim’s young sons, are already busy on the nursery. Their company is called Kerley & Co and it’s a real success story, because David and Priscilla began with one greenhouse in Cambridgeshire some twenty odd years ago. From day one, they aspired to bring ‘innovative new flowers to the patio plant market ‘to quote their informative website.

Their first venture produced the lilac double petunia ‘Tumbelina Priscilla Pro’, which many of you will know. It was a breakthrough because the frilly double flowers lasted for many weeks. More petunias, singles and doubles have followed on and petunias remain the nursery’s key product.

The Kerley family’s plants are now grown all over the world. Once selected the plants are micro-propagated, or grown under tissue culture. They’re not traditionally propagated by seed or division, because many are sterile and don’t produce seeds. Plant material is cut from the mother plant and placed in small glass flasks containing growing medium. The flasks rotate in warm, light conditions and then the plants are potted on. Large numbers can be raised within a year. However, the whole process relies on healthy and resilient mother plants and the skill of the technicians. I used to cut tiny meristems when I worked in vegetable research. You needed a very steady hand indeed.

Many plants are micro-propagated these days. They include the wonderful Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’, raised at Far Plants based in West Sussex, and the marble-leafed hellebore ‘Penny’s Pink’ bred by Rodney Davey in Devon. Both took many years to breed and both are protected by PBR – or plant breeders’ rights. These star plants have endured for many a year and I grow and love both. Other micro-propped plants come and go, sometimes due to production problems. Anenome ’Wild Swan’, which was The Chelsea Plant of the Year in 2011, has been problematic for instance. I believe it has re-emerged this year though.  Some  disappear due to a lack of interest from the public. Perhaps they have it already, or perhaps fashions have changed, or perhaps something better has come along.

Patio plants may sound naff to some, but gardening is changing. Many house owners have smaller gardens and less time to garden than previous generations. They are far more likely to use containers to create eye-catching colour, but they’re also looking for something a little better than seed-raised winter pansies or colourful giant-flowered polyanthas. I find myself drawn to spring colour at the end of winter, so I resurrect my old plant theatre and look for interesting plants to create some colour and interest before the real season begins. I can see the display from my kitchen window and it lifts my spirits daily, particularly on a grey day.

The Kerley family breed a whole range of attractive plants besides petunias. They include Pansy Ruffles, a long-flowering Calendula named PowerDaisy, Wallfower Spring Breeze, nemesia and phygelius. These find their way into better garden centres. However, I am most besotted by their primulas. When spring seems close, but not quite here, I always acquire a couple of Belarina primulas, because these are hardy enough to plant in the garden afterwards.  This year I found two Prima Belarinas. ‘Goldie’ has large golden-yellow flowers and I also bagged a Prima Belarina ‘Blue’. I like the way a ruff of leaves seems to support the double primrose flowers.

Golden yellow and cobalt-blue always look very jaunty together and I’ve added a miniature daffodil called ‘Snipe’.

I also picked a fully double red and gold polyantha named ‘Persian Weave’, launched by the Kerley family in 2023-2024. It’s one of the Primula Pollyanna Series and they all have lots of fully double flowers that last for many weeks, per stem.  ‘Persian Weave’ will hopefully endure in the garden, because I have struggled to keep a double maroon and gold-laced primula named ‘Elizabeth Killeley’ going. This also has PBR, although it appeared in a garden of its own volition. PBR often works against a plant, for nurseries and growers are reluctant to propagate it because they have to pay a percentage to the breeder. If the breeder has spent many years developing the plant, they invariable keep that plant in production and earn much-deserved income, so I’m not against PBR in this case.

The most important thing in plant breeding is to spot the gaps and, in order to do that, you have to know what’s out there. David Kerley worked for Unwins Seeds for many years, before setting up his own business. One of my dearest friends, the Late Alan Bloom (1906-2005) used to look for the gaps in the market. He bred 120 or so plants and most of his perennials were bred by Percy Piper, who’s commemorated by a lime-yellow poker and a campanula. The alpines were raised by Lawrence Flatman who has a compact hardy geranium named for him. The three men stayed friends and used to meet once a week for a coffee at Bressingham Hall in Norfolk.

Alan also named three phloxes after nursery employees, the pink Phlox paniculata ‘Eva Cullum’, the salmon-pink ‘Mary Fox’ and ‘Bill Green’. Eva Cullum is still available.

Alan, who was a Quaker, was unique in the gardening world because he forged links with many European nurserymen.  He was particularly fond of Georg Arends (1863 – 1952) and he told me how impressed he was because Arend’s nursery was at Ronsdorf, high up in the Ruhr district of Germany. Alan introduced a sedum named ‘Autumn Joy’, now ‘Herbstfreude’, several astilbes and a cluster of bergenias. He developed the concept of island beds and was one of the first to embrace ornamental grasses like Miscanthus. How lucky I was to know him!