FIRESTAR Roses

The Firestar Rose Story

The Birth of the Rose

The story of the “birth” of Firestar is an unusual one.
Roses don’t often grow from seed, but Firestar did!

The seed was an idea in the minds of two nurserymen; Robert Wakelam, a Victorian whose family farm was threatened during the Black Saturday fires, and rose grower Danny Knight from South Australia who had a passion to help.

The idea was simple – find a unique rose, ask Australians to buy the rose, and contribute as much as possible to CFA from the proceeds.

From that seed, the idea gradually took shape and the search for the right rose with the right qualities began.

Over time, the concept was refined to a single rose called Firestar - the first in a series dedicated to CFA – a new rose in the series each year.

Each rose had to be an entirely new, unique rose. The first in particular needed to be a great rose!

Big hearted and strong enough to match the efforts of firefighters, and adaptable and resilient like the communities affected by fire in our country.

Mostly of course it needed to be beautiful – a living symbol of the memories and the hopes of those who lived through the fires.

“Firestar is now joined by the second in the series – Firestar Phoenix.”

We weren’t asking for much – just a rose that would grow anywhere in Australia tolerating climatic conditions from Darwin to Hobart, a rose that was unique in the world, was disease resistant, conveyed a sense of solace and quiet beauty, and embodied both a sense of hope and renewal, and the energy of re-generation.

Finally Robert Harkness from Harkness New Roses in Hertfordshire UK offered his help. Robert was the man who created the Princess Diana rose to support the Princess Diana Foundation.

Over a year earlier, he had developed one flower in his nursery – one of hundreds later discarded because they were not strong enough, or sufficiently unique or beautiful.

This single bloom was carefully hand pollinated, germinated, the best flower of the second generation selected and grown to maturity, then lovingly budded onto mature rose wood stock.

When it matured, budwood was cut from this plant, and the process of growing the new rose began in earnest.

At this stage, although we knew the flower was beautiful, no-one knew if the rose would develop as a strong, healthy and disease resistant plant, or even if it would grow “true to type”.

It did all of these things and more.

In 2008 a bundle of cuttings labeled “HAR415” (the plant which was to later become Firestar) arrived at Knights Roses in the Barossa Valley, fresh from quarantine.

HAR415 had come via the United States of America, where it had won “All American Rose Selection” for 2010.

Once in Australia it was warmly welcomed, and received the highest judges award and the Public Choice Award at the Adelaide Trial Gardens in 2008.

For the next eighteen months, Danny and his team in South Australia patiently hand budded and grafted the first 30,000 Firestar rose bushes.

But HAR415 didn’t have much of a ring to it – a name was needed.

Next page: Naming the Firestar Rose 

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