Rose expert David C.H. Austin senior, right, and his son, David J.C. Austin Jr.

Courtesy of David Austin

After 12 years, the Newport Flower Show’s ship has come in: Picton Castle.

The 179-foot bark from New Zealand will reportedly arrive in Newport next weekend, several days ahead of the city’s Tall Ships event, and right on time for the flower show. In fact, the great white, three-masted ship is supposed to drop anchor right behind Rosecliff mansion, site of the flower show, which runs Friday through Sunday.

“That’s a big deal,” said Bettie Bearden Pardee, the show’s chairwoman. “We’ll have our own tall ship.”

Not surprisingly, this year’s flower show theme is “Sea Fever . . . A Tribute to the Tall Ships.”

Gardening and sailing, you wonder, is there a connection? Yes, which we’ll get to, but ships at this show share billing with roses, the featured flower. The reason’s simple: David C.H. Austin.

The 81-year-old Englishman, who revolutionized roses by hybridizing the appearance and fragrance of old varieties with the hardiness and repeat-blooming traits of new ones, is this year’s recipient of a lifetime achievement award.

“His roses are heady,” said Pat Fernandez, vice-chairwoman of the show’s design division. “It’s impossible not to notice, unless you have no sense of smell. You walk by and are wowed by their scent. For rose growers, that’s important. It’s the first thing people do when they see a rose. They bend down and smell it. Often, (if it’s not an Austin rose) it can be disappointing.”

Accepting the award on Austin’s behalf will be his son, David J.C. Austin, who now oversees the burgeoning worldwide family business, which started as many successful enterprises do: with rejection.

“No one would take my father seriously,” said Austin by phone from England.

David C.H. Austin had this idea. Bring back old roses.

“The successful nurseries only wanted modern roses,” David J.C. Austin said. “They couldn’t see why anybody would want an old-fashioned rose. They thought it was an old idea.”

So David C.H. Austin started his own nursery, and his own rose revolution. This was in the late 1960s, when modern and essentially scent-free hybrid tea roses reigned.

“It’s whatever’s in the breeding of hybrid roses,” David J.C. Austin said. “When you use a certain type of line of flower, if it doesn’t have fragrance in it, you’re not going to bring it back. It’s not in the breed.”

Hybrid tea roses, according to David J.C. Austin, were largely bred for their form, particularly at their budding stage.

“It’s interesting to see how a fashion can go in one direction that’s really something of a cul-de-sac,” he said. “It’s the wrong direction.”

Once the David Austin company brought back old roses, in form and fragrance, with the disease-resistance and repeat-blooming of modern roses, it was then on to variations on a theme, about 300 variations far: different varieties of climbing roses and shrub roses, and roses in an array of colors.

Austin roses combine the best qualities of roses, which include thorns. The company won’t breed those away.

“For us, the characteristic of the rose is that it has thorns,” David J.C. Austin said. “You learn to live with them. It’s part of its character. Romantically, it’s part of the contrast, the vicious thorns and the beautiful flowers. It’s a great combination: beauty and the beast.”

While Austin is an avid gardener, growing many flowers in his personal garden, his preference and his business is for just one flower: roses.

“From a plant point of view, they’re extremely diverse, from tiny miniatures to 50-foot climbers. I don’t think another plant can compare with the colors, shapes and types. If you’re going to pick one plant, pick a rose.”

All roses aren’t alike, according to Rhode Island gardeners. And none, they say, can compare to David Austin roses, which are now readily and widely available.

“A lot of the roses people have here are David Austin roses,” Pardee said. “We are buying David Austin roses a lot of the times and we’re not even aware of it.”

If you want to see and smell a staggering collection of Austin roses, go to the Newport Flower Show. It will feature a temporarily installed rose garden in front of Rosecliff, 15 feet wide by 40 feet long, involving a few hundred bushes.

“You can only imagine what the scent will be like,” Fernandez said.

Maybe seeing roses doesn’t help you grow your own. But talking about them may.

So the show includes a special forum on roses with David J.C. Austin.

“This will be a chance to tutor at the foot of the master,” Pardee said. “Bring your questions.”

Austin will be joined by a panelist of local rosarians, including Mike Chute, a past president of the Rhode Island Rose Society, who’s a big fan of David C.H. Austin.

“He took old garden roses, the charm and old-fashioned flower form and fragrance,” Chute said. “He merged that with a wide range of colors and the repeat blooming of modern roses. He caught lightning in a bottle.”

It wasn’t luck. It was work.

Successfully hybridizing roses takes eight to 10 years, according to Chute. Austin came out with his first hybrid in 1969, the Constance Spry, though it was a once-flowering rose. The repeat-bloomers would come in the following decade.

“He did this at the time baby boomers were getting into gardening,” Chute said. “He exploded on to the rose scene after working 30 years with roses.”

Roses, according to Chute, are divided into three classifications: wild, old garden roses (pre 1867), and hybrid tea roses introduced after 1867.

Austin roses, Chute said, are distinctive. Their blooms often look quartered, and they’re very big, what he calls “globular.”

“There is nothing else like them,” Chute said.

While roses may not have much of a relationship to ships, plants in general do, according to Pardee. This would explain some of the show’s exhibit categories, such as the widow’s walk and, most notably, the Wardian case, named after its inventor, Dr. Nathaniel Ward, in 1833.

“Every year the lectures and exhibits are chosen to tie in with the theme of the show,” Pardee said. “The Wardian case was a terrarium that explorers brought with them to take home plant cuttings.”