Rose Breeder  

Listing last updated on Wed Aug 2024

Launceston, Tasmania 7250
Australia

Australian Rose Annual – Articles written by Sister Mary Xavier
1968-166 School rose shows
1969-170 2nd rose show at the convent
1969-176 How long should a rose plant last?
1971-138 An ideal motor sprayer
1976-88 Retrospect.
1977-89 If I were starting again - symposium
1978-107 Random Thoughts
1983-86 My 12 best garden roses - Symposium
1989-96 How I prepare my roses for the bench - symp

1997. Susan Irvine’s Rose Gardens, 1992 & 1994. This edition 1997
p232 …. I was interested to find out who had bred ‘Iced Parfait’ and intrigued when I discovered its breeder is an eighty-year-old nun from Launceston, Sister Xavier. Sister Xavier has loved roses all her life. When she was at St. Finn Barr’s convent, the Dean of Launceston encouraged her to plant roses in the convent garden. Soon she had more than three hundred growing there. She became a member of the Tasmanian Rose Society, and following in the footsteps of earlier English churchmen, Dean Hole of Rochester and Bishop Darlington, she also became a keen exhibitor at rose shows. In fact, she won the local championship five times with ‘Ena Harkness’. Then she became interested in breeding. She got hold of the books of the late Dr. A. S. Thomas of Melbourne and studied his methods carefully…..

1996 Australian Rose Annual
p40. Ivan Le Fevre. Vale - Sister Xavier 15-2-1910 to 12-11-1995
Sister Mary Xavier died in the Launceston General Hospital on Sunday 12th November 1995. With her passing the rose world has lost one of its most dedicated and enthusiastic members.
Typically, one of her last acts, on the Friday before her death, was to pick roses from her garden to stage a display at the Launceston Horticultural Society's Rose and Iris Show to be held on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th November. She was not well enough on the Saturday morning to arrange the display herself and entered hospital where she died the following day. Included in her exhibit was a new, red exhibition rose she had raised and for which registration action was in hand. A successful exhibitor at both Launceston and Hobart shows over many years, and an astute rose judge, Sister Xavier was a former Vice President of the Rose Society of Tasmania.
Known affectionately as the "Rose Sister" she passed on to generations of students at St. Finn Barr's College her deep and enduring love of the rose. like all who came in contact with her, in Tasmania and in other States, they will have been touched and enriched by having known her and will regret her passing.

2001, October Your Garden magazine
p76 Susan Irvine. Photo of Sister Mary Xavier’.