Magazine  (2024)  Page(s) Cover. Vol 46, No. 1.  Includes photo(s).
 
Front cover: Dr Hogg, (1880, Hybrid Perpetual): named for a pomologist, botanist and writer, of the Scottish border country. The rose starts dark red but becomes purple. (Photo: Editor.) 

Magazine  (Sep 2020)  Page(s) 36. Vol 42, No. 3.  Includes photo(s).
 
Patricia Routley.  Saving Dr. Hogg.   Reprinted from the Historic Rose Journal 2002, No 24, page 5.
A neighbour who knew of my interest in old roses, peered over a fence at a Western Australian cattle sale and came home with the news that there appeared to be old roses there. I made contact and later visited to find that the farm was owned by Mrs. Sheila Gravett, who would turn 95 in June 2002, and her family. Sheila had a wooden marker, painted with the name, in front of each rose.
One of the roses had a marker Dr Hogg and Sheila told me, “Dr. Hogg was probably one of the earliest roses in our garden. It would have been planted here early in the 1930’s and came from friends of ours in Kirup. Most of the old gardens then were built up from cuttings from friends.”
The garden contained many other varieties, each of them labelled, but not all of the markers proved to be accurate. One of the two labelled Hoosier Beauty turned out to be Mme Caroline Testout and her Orléans Rose was rather more pink than I think it should be. Neither did her Elizabeth of York quite match the colours of its descriptions in books – but of Dr Hogg I am more confident.
It took me a while to find a reference to this rose. It was a Hybrid Perpetual, a seedling of Pierre Notting bred by Thomas Laxton in 1880, and put on the market by Paul & Son. Initially, the only references I was able to find came from Brent C. Dickerson’s The Old Rose Advisor, the 1928 and 1930 Australian Rose Annuals that I had indexed, and some old Western Australian nursery catalogues, one of which was the 1909 catalogue for J. Hawter’s Blackwood Nurseries at Mullalyup. This nursery was about 10 km from the friends who once lived at Kirup, thus I was reasonably confident of the authenticity of Dr Hogg. The descriptions of Dr Hogg read true: reddish violet, deep violet, the nearest approach to blue, bell-shaped petals, flowers not large, good shape, strong grower, vigorous, hardy, free bloomer (one reference did say shy bloomer).
In February, 1998 budwood was supplied to a Perth rose nursery. In the winter of 1999 I attempted to strike cuttings of Dr Hogg but was unsuccessful. The following year I took four cuttings and one eventually made it and was planted out in my garden in October, 2000. I gave it a sunny spot and a large hole with very rich and well-rotted compost. In 2001 I took more cuttings from the old original plant up to Perth to a lady with a reputation for saving old roses.
In preparing to write these words, I queried the status of the budwood given to the large nursery in 1998 and the cuttings I took up to Perth in 2001. The budwood got lost and the cuttings died. So there is a moral here: don’t sit back and just assume that the rose is saved, because it is not necessarily so.
Dr Hogg flowered for me for the first time in November 2001 and for the following five months has always had a perfect flower for me to show visitors. I would take a chair out and sit in front of Dr Hogg and just look at its handsome beauty. It is perfumed and makes a graceful arching bush. I was so blown away by the rose that I put a paragraph in the Heritage Roses in Australia summer Journal in 2001 about my foundling, saying it was the pride and joy of our garden. I am sure it was the unfortunate name that almost did it in, for what proud lady gardener would want her impudent sons giggling at her Dr. Pig rose.
I mentioned my foundling in one of my letters to Milton Nurse and sent him a picture of my now blooming and beautiful old rose. He wrote back “As you note, Dr Hogg is not in the large Hybrid Perpetual collection at Sangerhausen. Nor is it in the RNRS collection at St. Albans or the National Trust collection at Mottisfont Abbey but the Fineschi collection at Cavriglia, Italy lists it - as ‘Dr. Hoog’! It is not in the latest Combined Rose List so it does not appear to be available commercially either. You have indeed got a rarity and it certainly sounds as if it should be better known”.
Action was called for. I had tried giving material to the bigger nurseries and now it was time to try a smaller, caring nursery who might treasure my treasure. In February 2002 I took budwood to Natalee Kuser, the owner of a small country-nursery and gave her a copy of Milton Nurse’s email that had the magic words “you have indeed got a rarity”. Her eyes lit up and I made sure she knew the history of the rose. Later when she told me she had 15 plants successfully budded, with her approval I sent a paragraph to the newsletters of our two neighbouring HRIA regions saying that Aunt Myrtle’s Garden Nursery now had budded plants of this special rose. The nursery was pleased because the sale of all Dr. Hogg plants was practically guaranteed and she later told me that word-of-mouth had resulted in orders even before the newsletters were published.
As I write these words in April 2002, there is still the original plant in Mrs. Gravett’s garden – but I have had the devastating news that this property will be auctioned shortly and the old house and garden may be bulldozed by December, 2002. There is also my thriving plant, and 15 budded plants in the tiny country nursery. 17 plants in all! I have persuaded my HRIA region to visit my garden and Mrs. Gravett’s garden on May 8 and no doubt many cuttings (they may have to be of pencil stub size) will be taken. I estimate that by next spring there should be about 30 plants growing in different gardens in Western Australia and Dr Hogg will be a lot less endangered than it was three years ago. I’m pleased.

Ed.  Plants are now (2020) in NSW, SA and Victoria.  It is a good one to espalier. 

Article (newspaper)  (Jul 2008)  Page(s) 10.  Includes photo(s).
 
Patricia Routley: Once upon a time I found a very old rose. At a cattle sale in 1998, June Keil had noticed old roses on a property on the Warren River. She came home and told me about seeing the old bushes and I later made contact with the elderly gardener, Mrs. Sheila Gravett. She had many old roses and one of the bushes was a scrawny old thing growing by the chookshed gate with a wooden hand-painted label still legible. “Dr. Hogg was one of the earliest roses in our garden,” Mrs. Gravett told me. “Most of the old gardens were built up with cuttings from friends and neighbours and this one would have been planted here early in the 1930’s. My sister was given the cutting when staying with Mrs. Wringe in Kirup at the Castledene farm, which was probably one of the earliest farms in the area.” The 1909 J. Hawter’s Blackwood Nurseries at nearby Mullalyup listed this rose so it seems likely that the rose came from there originally. It took me three years to successfuly strike that old bush from Mrs. Gravett and it first flowered for me in Northcliffe in 2001. It is a purple-red hybrid perpetual, very similar in colour and shape to David Austin’s 1967 ‘Chianti’, but a tad smaller flower. If I tuck a cane under another rose so that the 2-metre canes are almost horizontal, it will produce flowers on short stems all along the cane in spring and summer, with some repeat in autumn if I water it at that time. It is quite prickly, but it is the age and the staying power of this rose that I love. ‘Dr. Hogg’ was bred by (Philip or Thomas) Laxton and introduced in England by G. Paul & Son, in 1880. It was a seedling either of ‘Pierre Notting’, HP, 1863 or ‘Duke of Edinburgh’, HP, 1868. A search for more information about the rose revealed that it was conserved in just one garden, Cavriglia in Italy. There followed a concentrated effort on my part to send cuttings and budwood around the world, interstate and within Western Australia. I think I have been successful. From just two known plants in the world, ‘Dr. Hogg’ is still a rare rose, but probably not quite so desperately endangered as it was when I found it.

Magazine  (2002)  Page(s) 5. No. 24.  
 
Patricia Routley.  Saving 'Dr. Hogg'.
A neighbour who knew of my interest in old roses, peered over a fence at a Western Australian cattle sale and came home with the news that there appeared to be old roses there....

Book  (1936)  Page(s) 348.  
 
Hogg, Dr. (HP) Laxton 1880; P. Notting X ? ; dark violet

Book  (1936)  Page(s) 351.  
 
Hoog, Dr. (HP) Laxton 1880; Duke of Edinburgh X ? ; bluish dark violet, strong, firm, shell-formed petals, not floriferous, growth 7/10, robust. = Dr. Hogg?

Website/Catalog  (1911)  Page(s) 24.  
 
Hybrid Perpetual Roses Dr. Hogg. Reddish violet, the nearest approach to blue; large and full.

Book  (1910)  Page(s) 283.  
 
Doctor Hogg Hybrid Perpetual; flowers deep violet, the nearest approach to blue, pretty bell-shaped petals; growth vigorous.

Magazine  (Jul 1909)  Page(s) 271.  
 
Association horticole lyonnaise Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée générale du dimanche 20 juin 1909....
Examen des Apports. — Sont déposés sur les tables les produits suivants : ....   — Par M. Laperrière fils, rosiériste à Champagne-au-Mont-d’Or (Rhône) : 1° Une collection de cinquante-deux variétés de Roses en fleurs coupées section des hybrides remontants. Dans le nombre on remarque surtout : Madame Furtado-Heine, Madame Mantin, Horace Vernet, Duc d'Orléans, Marguerite Jamain, Berthe Baron, Souvenir de Madame Berthier, Docteur Hogg, Jean Soupert, etc....
A M. Laperrière fils, pour ses roses hybrides remontants, prime de 1 ^re classe

Book  (1902)  Page(s) 132.  
 
Hybrides Remontants. Groupe I. — Madame Victor Verdier
Ce groupe se rapproche beaucoup de celui des "Charles Lefebvre"; on dit communément des rosiers qui le composent que ce sont des "Général Jacqueminot" à bois lisse: ils sont très florifères, franchement remontants. Rameaux lisses, verts, aiguillons petits et rares; feuillage vert, moyen; fleur en coupe, floraison le plus souvent en corymbe; on y rencontre les coloris les plus variés, du rose au rouge pourpre noirâtre.
4390. Doctor Hoog... (Laxton 1880)... violet foncé.