The Rosiest Business

For thousands of U.S. gardeners, the best reading of the winter comes when the postman delivers the spring catalogue of Jackson & Perkins Co., the world's biggest rose growers. This spring the J. & P. catalogue displayed more than 120 different varieties of roses in all floral colors except blue, breathlessly described them in the rosiest of prose. Among the new roses to dream over were Aida ("displays the same majestic grandeur and dark beauty as its namesake"), Golden Fleece ("performs with all the grace and beauty of a flirting ballerina") and Spartan ("no race of men ever existed as strong and vigorous as the Spartans").

Last week, in an attempt to keep up with the mail orders engendered by such come-ons, J. & P. was in the midst of its 85th shipping season, with 1,200 employees filling orders from customers in 48 states for some 9,000,000 rosebushes.

The J. & P. garden of roses embraces a 2,300-acre home-base nursery at Newark. N.Y., 1,000-acre and 1, 900-acre rose fields in California and Arizona, plus smaller nurseries in New Jersey and Indiana. Sales this year are headed toward $9,700,000. mostly of roses (by far the most popular U.S. flower) but also including such other J. & P. specialties as delphiniums and mums. In the rose business, in which it annually grosses three times the combined sales of its three nearest rivals, J. & P. also leads its field in adapting to changing times. In 1940 it promoted floribunda roses--many full-sized blooms carried candelabra-fashion on a single stem--for small gardeners who want to make the kind of splashy effect with half a dozen rosebushes that estate gardeners get with whole beds. Today 70% of J. & P.'s rose sales are in floribundas. For those who want dozens of blossoms on a single stalk, J. & P. developed the 5-ft.-high, fast-selling tree rose, still cannot keep up with orders.

Patented Flowers. The company's dominance of the field comes from the more than half a century of rose-growing and selling experience of President Charles H. Perkins, 67. Apprenticed at twelve to an uncle who founded the company in 1872, Charlie Perkins bought control in 1928, had a rough time during the Depression, which put the company $875,000 in the hole. In 1940 he broke into the mail-order field, encouraged by a new U.S. patent law that allowed the patenting and collection of royalties on new rose varieties. For the first time rosarians had a financial incentive to plunge into rose research, development and national promotion.

Currently, Perkins spends $250,000 a year in the hunt for new roses (and $1,800,000 on ads and other promotion), employs a top geneticist, Eugene S. Boerner, as his chief hybridizer. Annually Boerner makes 10,000 hand pollinations, getting up to ten tiny seeds from each crossing. From some 250,000 plants nursed along to the bloom stage, less than half a dozen new ones are selected each year to go into J. & P.'s catalogue. A single rose may cost $50,000 to develop, but royalties on a single rose have hit $500,000, so, says Perkins, "it's well worth it."

Hoover & Smith. Besides developing its own roses, J. & P. searches the world for new varieties, and pays out almost $250,-000 a year in royalties for the rights to grow and sell its competitors' roses. It even gives rivals space in its 17-acre show gardens at Newark, which last year were viewed by 600,000 visitors.

In the highly speculative business, Charlie Perkins sometimes loses a bet. He turned down a chance to buy a French origination called Mme. A. Meilland. U.S. Competitor Conard-Pyle bought the rights to it in 1945, called it the Peace rose and made it a bestseller. Perkins countered by developing the Fashion rose, made it such a fast seller that this year he will gross $410,000 from it alone. "In the rose business," says Perkins, "the name is the thing." He once bipartisanly named two roses Al Smith and Herbert Hoover. After the 1928 election, sales of the Smith died, after 1932 the Hoover withered--but not for good. Lately, Hoover's reputation as an elder statesman caused the Hoover to bloom again.

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