Patrick Grant

Patrick Grant (1860 – 28 September 1945) was a Scottish-born Australian rose breeder. Two of his roses were world-famous at his death, though to some extent superseded since. Life Patrick Grant was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1860. He was the son of a stonemason and trained as a wheelwright. He migrated to New South Wales in 1885 and worked for 20 years as a building contractor. As a dairy farmer on virgin land at Nambucca River, Macksville on the north coast of New South Wales he developed a famous herd of Ayreshires. He and his wife Beatrice had eight children, six of whom worked as adults on their 400-acre farm. He thus appears as a successful small landholder, quite different from the members of the landed elite like Alister Clark and Olive Fitzhardinge who were the best known rose breeders of the time. At the end of the nineteenth century, he sat on the North Sydney council. He was president of the Primary Producers Union 1904–1934. He was president of the National Rose Society of NSW 1929–1931 and stayed on the committee till 1943. The Society's championship cup for a rose exhibit is called the Patrick Grant Cup.