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Ping Lim - Master Rose Breeder

Ping Lim is a rosarian for the twenty-first century, with a background that spans continents and horticultural traditions. Raised in Laos and educated in Taiwan, Ping got his first American job in San Francisco. Now, after years of study and training in every aspect of rose breeding, marketing and production, he is Rose Research Director for Bailey Nurseries, leading an award winning Oregon-based rose breeding program.

Ping’s career as a breeder started in 1981, when he took a job as Rose Research and Breeding Assistant for DeVor Nursery in California. At DeVor he worked with veteran breeder Jerry Twomey, who was to win All American Rose Selection honors for ‘Sheer Elegance’™ and ‘All That Jazz’ (1992). After eleven years with Twomey at DeVor, Ping was hired by Bailey Nurseries a century old, family-owned firm, headquartered in Minnesota.

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At Bailey Nurseries Ping oversees the cross breeding, testing and evaluation of thousands of seedlings per year. Only a few of the strongest survive the rigorous selection process to be introduced to the commercial market, and the quality of those selections has made them famous. In 2002 Bailey Nurseries introduced ‘Love and Peace’™, the result of work by Ping and his mentor, Jerry Twomey. The rose was a success, winning the prestigious All America Rose Selections award. In 2005, Ping Lim won the same award for ‘DayDream’™. Now, only four years after his first introduction, the rose breeder has produced Easy Elegance®, a line of twenty-five new, own root roses.

Ping Lim, Master Rose Breeder

Easy Elegance® roses are designed for modern gardens and gardeners. The hardy, floriferous shrubs combine vigor, disease resistance and hardiness with traditional rose virtues including beauty and fragrance. One of the Easy Elegance® roses, Macy’s Pride™, so impressed officials of the celebrated department store that they selected it to symbolize Macy’s centennial anniversary.

Producing strong new roses means finding strong parent roses. Like many dedicated plantsmen, Ping is always on the lookout for those parents, and he has traveled far and wide in search of new rose species to use in his breeding efforts. His Asian heritage and fluency in Asian languages and dialects have made it easy for him to work in China and other Asian countries, where scores of species roses await discovery. To date, Ping has brought thirty-five previously undiscovered species back from his travels, ready for propagating, testing and possible use in the rose breeding efforts.

Snowdrift

Ping Lim’s work truly has both roots and wings. The roots come from his ties to ancient Asian cultures and traditions, as well as to the one hundred year heritage of Bailey Nurseries. The wings come from all those rose seedlings, and Ping’s ongoing search for the next generation of garden roses.

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