[From Selecting and Planting Roses for Exhibition, by Jerry Scoville, p. 6]: Two things are important in selecting winning roses for your garden. One, and most importantly, it must be a good rose by the standards adopted by the American Rose Society (most serious competitors have ordered the inexpensive Guidelines for Judging Roses from ARS) and two, it helps if it is a rose that is currently "in vogue" with rose judges.

[From Roses: Old Roses and Species Roses, by Eleonore Cruse, p. 13:] The first great rose show was held at Lyons in 1845.

[From The Rose Garden, by William Paul, p. 80... Paul was writing in 1910:] When cultivating for exhibition we think it advisable to reduce the number of varieties, and plant two or three specimens of each. It is not often that we can cut three fine trusses of flowers (which are often required under the present mode of exhibiting round London) from a single plant at the same point of time...

[From The Old Rose Advisor, by Brent C. Dickerson, p. 14:] rose shows [were] first notably organized in 1865 by... Camille Bernardin's "special rose exposition" at Brie-Comte-Robert...

[From The Makers of Heavenly Roses, pp. 21-22:] in 1858, a Grand National Rose Show had been held in St James's Hall in London. It moved to the Crystal Palace, where in 1860 it was visited by 16,000 people.