Like the dozens of new rose varieties that pop up in nurseries every year, the tribute plant is a result of meticulous breeding overseas and expensive manual labour in Australia.

The breeder responsible, 'Kordes of Germany', likely trialled about 200,000 seedlings in the process of creating Gallipoli Centenary Rose, before distributing cuttings all over the world.

Kalangadoo rose grower, Brian Wagner, is one of few that continues to propagate roses in Australia because the cost of manual labour reduces margins dramatically.

In an interview broadcast on ABC Rural, he said, "Growers are disappearing. There are four or five major growers in Australia; if you went back 20 to 30 years ago there would have been well over double that."

Wagner, a relatively small grower, has planted 157,000 cuttings this year and every one of those has been passed through multiple hands.

Before the new variety can even be introduced a ‘mother rose’, with strong root systems that thrive in the south east of South Australia, needed to be developed.

Every cutting is hand-planted, but not before someone cuts out the ‘eyes’ on each stick, which is then individually treated and placed in sawdust for weeks.

In the meantime hundreds of thorns must be removed, by hand, from each cutting of the new Gallipoli Centenary Rose variety.

A ‘budder’ uses a knife to insert a piece of the new variety into the root stock, which is done by bending over with their head between their knees. Professional budders repeat this manoeuvre between 3,000 and 4,000 times a day.

"The life expectancy of a rose budder is not that great," Wagner said. "My mum budded for many years but she did have a hip replacement at a reasonably young age. If you're budding 4,000 buds a day, you are bending up and down 4,000 times a day."

Wagner's Rose Nursery is a glorious sight at this time of year, but like many of the region's industries, Mother Nature has made production difficult. The dry spring of 2014 is depicted in lines of flower-less plants and many patches of dead sticks.

The years of work behind a new rose variety are also a risk; if the plant does not strike a chord with consumers, the nurseries will not buy them from Wagner.

‘Sexy Rexy’ and ‘Golden Showers’ have not performed well, proving a rose by any other name might smell as sweet but consumers do care about what is on the tag.

However, the story, honour and reflection behind this year's deep red Gallipoli Centenary Rose has attracted attention.

"So far, going by sales, I've most probably under-budded, I should have put more on," Wagner said.

"Other varieties can be a brilliant plant and we know it's an excellent plant but it gets missed for whatever reason and all of a sudden we get caught with 300 or 400 extra plants. We end up destroying a lot of these plants, which is a bit of a sad thing but it does happen in the industry."

Source: abc.net.au

Photo: Danielle Grindlay