The Garden Ramblers Blog

Renowned Rosarian Coming to Charleston SC

Dr. Malcolm Manners will be at Cypress Gardens  February 22 to give a lecture in the morning at Fruitmania GS and he will give a program in the afternoon on Old Garden Roses at 2 pm. Tickets for just Dr. Manner’s rose program will be $10 which includes admission to the Gardens.

Dr. Malcolm Manners is a Professor of Horticultural Science at Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida, where he teaches courses in general horticulture, tropical fruits, horticultural pests and diseases, plant physiology, and plant nutrition. Since 1984, he has managed FSC’s rose mosaic virus heat therapy program, which cures roses of virus disease and makes healthy propagating material available to the nursery industry.  In conjunction with that program, he manages a collection of approximately 200 rose varieties, in two campus gardens and the college greenhouses. Most of the certified mosaic free old garden roses now grown in the U.S. came through the Florida Southern program. In 2013, Dr. Manners was honored as a Great Rosarians of the World.  The Great Rosarians of the World™ lecture series was founded in 2001 to honor and celebrate the men and women who have contributed to our understanding and love of our national flower, the Rose. In 1990, he imported a collection of Bermuda’s “mystery roses,” and it is from FSC’s gardens that much of the U.S. stock of these roses has been propagated. He has also worked closely with molecular biologist D. Nancy Morvillo at Florida Southern, researching the relationships of various roses, especially the older Noisettes, with DNA analysis.