A family in agriculture. A life in roses.

In 1987, Michael Francis left the family gin to farm cotton. Two years later he planted his first rose crop, beginning a rose-growing business he would develop into a national supplier.

Collecting and storing budwood, or scion material, is part of the work behind the crop. The farm still uses these collection and storage techniques today.

Michael Francis expanded the business into the Canadian market, extending the reach of the family’s Arizona-grown roses.

Tyler Francis joined his father in the family business, beginning his own work in the rose fields.

Working directly with international breeders marked a turning point for Francis Roses.

The family chose to represent their work without establishing a competing breeding program of its own. Those relationships expanded Francis’s role, from growing roses to evaluating new varieties and helping bring selected introductions to the U.S. market.

Working across five breeding partnerships gives Francis a breadth of candidates and perspectives. Our role is to understand the possibilities in that work, evaluate them under U.S. growing conditions and select varieties with a place in the market and the garden.

Raspberry Kiss expressed an approach that would become central to Francis’s selections: distinctive flowers supported by the qualities of the whole plant.

Its marked blooms drew our attention. Its fall flowering and disease resistance in our evaluations gave us reason to advance it. For Francis, novelty had to be accompanied by garden performance.

Francis released Miracle on the Hudson in 2014. That year, the variety appeared on the September/October cover of American Rose, the magazine of the American Rose Society.

In 2016, Francis Roses released the Miranda Lambert hybrid tea. Royalties from its sales are donated to Lambert’s MuttNation Foundation.

For Vogue’s 125th anniversary, Francis Roses introduced the Vogue Anniversary Rose, bred by Brad Jalbert, to American gardens.

Growing roses in Arizona means answering to water, to plant-health rules and to the policies that shape both. Tyler Francis served as president of the Arizona Nursery Association from 2019 to 2021 and has served on the AmericanHort Advocacy Committee, which represents the nursery industry in Washington, since 2019.

In 2021 he joined a joint drought task force on Arizona’s drought contingency plan at the invitation of Senator Mark Kelly, and since 2022 he has served on the Senator’s agriculture advisory group, which meets twice a year on the issues facing farming in the state. The farm’s work with USDA APHIS on importing breeder budwood is part of the same effort.

Julie Andrews wanted a rose with lasting qualities.

In conversations with Tyler Francis, she took an active part in the selection, receiving flowers and choosing the variety that would carry her name. Pink flowers with a luminous yellow center, fragrance and strong disease resistance brought the choice together.

Bred by Delbard and known internationally as Pink Paradise, the variety had already received Germany’s ADR distinction in 2011. Its introduction as Julie Andrews became another chapter in Francis’s work connecting breeders, named introductions and American gardens.

Among the hundreds of coded candidates Francis received from its breeding partners in 2020 were the four that would become the Origin Release. Planted in our Arizona fields and grown at evaluation sites across the United States, they were raised without fungicide treatments and observed through successive seasons.

In 2023, Interplant’s Bravo Babylon Eyes received the Golden Rose at the International Rose Competition in The Hague. Tyler Francis accepted the award on Interplant’s behalf.

In September 2025, Arnaud Delbard baptized the Sandrine Kiberlain rose in France, with the actress present. It became one of the four 2027 Introductions.

On Valentine’s Day 2026, The Most Beautiful, bred by Roses Forever with Mayte Garcia, was baptized in Las Vegas. Tyler Francis spoke at the ceremony; the rose is part of the Francis Collection.

Shania Twain shared her love of roses from the start. She took an active part in the selection of the variety that would carry her name, and at the naming in Los Angeles in May 2026 she showed photographs of the roses growing at her home in Switzerland.

Bred by Rosen Tantau, the Shania Twain rose joined the Francis Collection with its naming.

Francis Roses remains a family farm. Tyler and Ashley Francis run it together, and the next generation is already in the fields.