Belgium is renowned for its exceptional plant nurseries, gardens, gardeners and landscape architects. One of its finest jewels is the Lens Roses nursery, a charming ambassador that exports roses all over the world.
150 years of excellence in the service of the rose and a secure future
Marie Noëlle Cruysmans
Photos: Photoeil, Lens Roses, Eden Magazine.
The story begins in 1870 in Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver near Mechelen, with the founding of the ‘Grandes Pépinières et Roseraies Louis Lens’. The business would eventually span several generations. Founder Louis starts by growing trees, shrubs and roses. His son Victor continues the work and starts cross-breeding roses. He wants to create cut flowers that ideally also smell nice, as was the fashion at the time. This is how his ‘Ville de Malines’, ‘Cardinal Mercier’, ‘Princesse Joséphine Charlotte’ and ‘Madame Louis Lens’ came to be.
The company quickly becomes the place to be. Lens grows all the most interesting roses of the moment and ships them without a care across the whole of Europe, to individuals and growers in England, Germany, France or Italy. However, the Second World War brings an end to that formidable momentum. The company is unfortunately shut down. Four years later, the entire collection is lost. To make a fresh start, Victor sends his son Louis junior to large estates in Belgium and Great Britain to collect grafting material there… A new beginning for the Louis Lens rose nursery.
Poetic and modest
Louis junior, a scientist with a passion for mathematics and astronomy, has to give up his studies to take part in the adventure. He gets straight to work. From 1947 onwards, on the advice of his parents, he starts cross-breeding new roses. After all, tastes have changed since the war. Enthusiasts now want modern roses, in single-coloured, sometimes flamboyant borders full of shrubs with large flowers. Primarily large-flowered hybrid teas and cluster-flowered roses, Floribunda and Polyantha. In 1963, the magnificent ‘Pascali’, a cross with the well-known hybrid tea ‘Queen Elizabeth’, causes fireworks. Thanks to its exceptional qualities: health, flower shape and white colour, Pascali wins the largest collection of medals and later also receives the unique accolade of “World's Favourite Rose 1991”.
Delighted with that initial success, Louis continues to cross with more natural roses, which suit him better. Musk hybrids – originating from a line of R. moschata, Noisette roses and Rosa multiflora –are loosely growing shrub roses with flowers in clusters. This group was developed in England in 1913 by Reverend Joseph Pemberton and includes well-known varieties such as ‘Penelope’, ‘Cornelia’ or ‘Felicia’. Louis prefers to work with these graceful and fragrant rose bushes, which are also very free-flowering and hardy. Like Pemberton, he uses the rose ‘Trier’ – bred in 1904 by Peter Lambert – with fragrant double creamy-white flowers with a yellow tinge. This rose is the origin of many moschata hybrids.
When he crosses that one with R. chinensis ‘Mutabilis’, a risky undertaking, he obtains the delightful ‘Plaisanterie’, with flowers that change colour throughout the flowering season: orange in bud, soft yellow as they open, then pink and ending in dark pink to almost violet. Gradually, Louis becomes the specialist in unique crosses, going against most breeders who continue to work mainly with large-flowered classic hybrid teas and cluster-flowered roses. The whole world envies him for his refined ‘Guirlande d’Amour’, ‘Pleine de Grâce’, ‘Bouquet Parfait’ or his tributes to virtuosos and composers such as ‘Ravel’, ‘Schubert’, ‘Sibelius’, ‘Puccini’, ‘Paganini’ or ‘Verdi’. His nursery is a true treasure trove, with an incredible collection of botanical roses that had sometimes even disappeared in situ. His well-known ‘Rush’, descended from Rosa multiflora, has the vigour of a wild rose combined with continuous flowering until the frosts…
Louis Lens found a successor for his nursery with the Rudy and Anne Velle-Boudolf family in Oudenburg. Following the master's example, Anne has been crossing and breeding since 1992. Her creations include ‘Dinky’, ‘Jean Stéphenne’, ‘Gaard um Tiizenbierg’ and ‘Caroline's Heart’. Lens Roses nursery is respected and loved in Belgium and all over the world. Discover the latest new developments from Lens Roses, and the classics by Louis Lens, at the festive Lens Roses exhibition at the Hex garden and plant days.
www.hex.be/exposant/lens-roses
Thanks to Eden Magazine. You can read the full article by Noëlle Cruysmans, featuring photographs of the best roses by Louis Lens and the selection by Anne Velle-Boudolf, in the spring 2021 issue of Eden Magazine https://edenmagazine.be/
