Breeder synonym: fryyoubet

Fryer’s Roses, part of the Blue Diamond Group of Garden centres, is to launch a new rose at this year’s RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2022 – the “Elizabeth Ashbrook” rose.

This new and exclusive rose is named " Elizabeth Ashbrook" in memory of the late Elizabeth, Viscountess Ashbrook of Arley Hall, Cheshire, and the mother of the present Viscount Ashbrook. This rose will replace a rose of the same name launched at RHS Tatton in 2018. 

Lord Ashbrook kindly provided the wording: “Elizabeth, Viscountess Ashbrook, was born in 1911 and died in 2002 aged 91 years. She was originally Elizabeth Egerton-Warburton. She married Desmond Flower in 1934 but in 1936 he inherited from his father the title Viscount Ashbrook so Elizabeth, for the rest of her life, was known as The Viscountess (or Lady) Ashbrook."

Lady Ashbrook lived at Arley Hall in Cheshire, for the whole of her life. This was the Warburton Family Estate which Lady Ashbrook inherited, the Warburtons having been at Arley since 1470 (and in Cheshire for some centuries before that).

Lady Ashbrook’s greatest interest was gardening and she did a huge amount during her life to improve the garden at Arley (which for some time had been well known, particularly for the Herbaceous Border). The garden was first opened to public visitors in the early 1960’s.

One of the major new features created by Lady Ashbrook in the garden was a collection of Shrub roses. She made this on the site of a previous formal area where there were Hybrid Tea roses. Lady Ashbrook did not particularly like Hybrid Teas in a garden, though she appreciated their value as cut flowers, but she became very fond of old fashioned and indeed newer varieties of Shrub roses both species and hybrids. The collection she made has been added to and enhanced over the years and remains an important feature.

Lady Ashbrook became quite an expert on Shrub roses and their cultivation. In this she was much influenced by many people in particular by two well-known gardeners, Graham Stuart Thomas, the distinguished nurseryman, writer and plantsman and Vita Sackville -West, the owner of Sissinghurst, where the world class garden is now owned by the National Trust. They were both rose experts”.

The current Lord Ashbrook says: “It seems to us highly appropriate that there should be a new rose called ‘Elizabeth Ashbrook’ after my mother who did so much to enhance the Arley Garden and started the shrub rose collection which remains one of our key features."