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Photo courtesy of Ms.Lefty
Rose Breeder
Listing last updated on Wed Apr 2025
Portadown, Northern Ireland
United Kingdom
[From The Book on Roses, by Dr. G. Griffin Lewis, p. 139:] Samuel McGredy of Portadown, Ireland was born in 1859, and died in April, 1926. He took to hybridizing as a hobby and acquired such success that he was led into it on an extensive scale, becoming a prolific producer and owning the largest seedling house in the world.
Operated Samuel McGredy and Son Nursery with his father until his father's death in 1903.
[From The Makers of Heavenly Roses, by Jack Harkness,] "Sam McGredy [II] made a modest start at breeding roses about 1895, regarding it as more of a hobby than serious business; he raised two or three hundred seedlings a year... At last, in 1905, after about ten years' work, he decided to exhibit a few of his best [roses] in London... Sam McGredy on his first venture won a Gold Medal for his salmon pink rose 'Countess of Gosford'... From that day, rose breeding was the main purpose of his life... He won Gold Medals regularly; among the great roses he introduced were the white 'Mrs. Herbert Stevens', 1910; the yellow 'Golden Emblem', 1917; and in 1918, the yellow 'Christine', the orange 'Emma Wright' and, in red and yellow, 'The Queen Alexandra Rose', the latter 'by special request named after our beloved Queen Alexandra'. She was the Royal Patron of the National Rose Society... Sam's parentages, however were not as simple as they seemed because, like Dicksons, he used many of his own seedlings... He was awarded the National Rose Society's Dean Hole Medal in 1921... The rose world dubbed him 'The Irish Wizard'... Sam McGredy died suddenly in April 1926, while some of his finest roses still awaited introduction..."
His son, Samuel Davidson McGredy III then took over.
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