Pedro Dot

At sixteen he was sent to work at an outside business and in 1910 to Belgium and Paris, where he came across the new methods of hybridisation, not to mention the French attitude to garden art.

[4] As early as 1924, Pedro entered new roses in scores of international competitions, winning a certificate of merit at the Bagatelle trials in Paris with the variety ‘Margarita Riera.’ He used such choice varieties as ‘Frau Karl Druschki,’ ‘Souvenir de Claudius Pernet,’ and ‘Mme Edouard Herriot’ to produce a large number of brightly coloured hybrid tea roses that all performed well in hot climates.

They mostly have Pernetiana ancestry – Pernet was the first to breed the intense yellow colour and strong smell of Rosa foetida into hybrid tea roses – and are not frost hardy.

[6] Given that a breeder often has scores of seedlings to choose from, Dot consistently chose roses with a wilder and more extreme character than their parents'.

[7] Throughout the 1930s Dot successfully built on the work of Joseph Pernet-Ducher to produce a range of flame-colored roses, from pastel to hot orange blends.

With ‘Baby Gold Star’, ‘Golden Sástago’, and ‘Joaquin Mir’, Dot achieved true, deep yellows.

[8] He was a member of the Amigos de las Rosas, founded in Barcelona in 1931 with Rubio, Cambo, Ros Sabaté, and Cyprien Camprubí, hybridiser of the well-known 'Violonista Costa.'

Dot was supported during the Civil War by commissions from the Republican government of Barcelona and by regular funds from Conard-Pyle and American rosarians.

Though his sons Simon and Marí fought at the front for the losing Republicans, the business was partly shielded from Nationalist victory by American money and support.