Rose Breeder  

Listing last updated on Wed Aug 2024

8, rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi
Faubourg du Temple
Paris,
France

André Dupont (May 2, 1742 Paris -1817)
See André Dupont 1742-1817 A Palace and Roses, by Vincent Derkenne, 2020
Founder of the Rose Collection at Luxembourg Palace.
Paris, France.
[From Monographie du Genre Rosier, by Auguste de Pronville, p. 147:] Among specific collections, that of the château de Malmaison, which was created by Dupont and which was one of the most significant, is to be mentioned; it accrued species and varieties which M. Kennedy sent from England.
[From La Rose de France, by Francois Joyaux, p. 52:] Two roses were named for André Du Pont (1756-1817). R. dupontii (which is still around) and 'Rosier Du Pont' (which is extinct).
[From The Old Rose Informant, by Brent C. Dickerson, p. 24: in 1824, Vibert wrote:] Vilmorin père and Dupont are the ones who [in France] began to collect [roses]...
[From Favourite Roses: 150 Garden Classics, by Peter Harkness, p. 16: 'Dupontii', the rose,] bears the name of André Dupont founder of the famous rose collection in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.
[From Roll-Call: The Old Rose Breeder, by Brent C. Dickerson, p. 376:] The Noisette firm acquired all or part of Dupont's collection following his death.
[From Old Roses, by Ethelyn Emery Keays, p. 93: Dupont was] a pioneer in artificial hybridization

[From Rose Letter, February 2021, p. 9ff.:] Dupont was born in Paris in 1742 (not in the Palatinate in 1756, as stated by Thory)....In 1785, Dupont built a small house and his first garden on a plot of land rented from the Carthusian monks, near the fence outside the Luxembourg Gardens. There he first began to collect roses.....Late in 1796, Dupont started over on the eastern edge of the Luxembourg Gardens (rue d’Enfer), a garden nearly 6600 square feet, this time collecting roses in earnest in the first École de Roses (“school of roses”), arranging the roses by species. He called on botanists at the National Museum and corresponded with foreign horticulturists....In December 1814 (six months after Joséphine’s death), Dupont exchanged his rose collection for a pension. That collection was installed in front of the Luxembourg Palace and remained perhaps the greatest rose garden in the world for much of the 19th century. Essentially a rectangular garden, in traditional French garden style, it first comprised 500 roses spread over twelve flower beds (about 40 meters by 1.7 meters each), surrounded by an olive green trellis nearly one meter high. Those roses probably represented most of Dupont’s 537 different rose varieties. Dupont died in 1817, a childless widower