How it works
A rose is two plants.
Every greenhouse rose is two plants living as one: the variety you sell — the flower, the colour, the vase life — grafted onto a rootstock that gives it its roots. The variety decides what the flower is. The rootstock decides how well it feeds — how much water and nutrient reach the crop, how fast it cycles, how much it can carry. Change the rootstock and you change what the plant yields, without changing the flower.
That’s the whole idea behind PRO: keep the variety the grower already wants, and put a stronger root system beneath it.
Why the rootstock matters
For most of the 20th century roses grew on their own roots, or on rootstocks first chosen for garden roses — Rosa canina, Indica Major, Inermis, Rosa multiflora. When the crop moved into greenhouses and hydroponics those roots fell short, and Natal Briar became the standard. A rootstock bred for the modern crop gives the variety a larger, more efficient root system — so it takes up more, recovers faster between flushes, and stands up better to stress.
How the two are joined
The variety is grafted onto the rootstock — but the method depends on where you grow.
Stenting — Europe, Africa, Asia. PRO’s founding technique, developed by Dr. P. A. van de Pol. The scion is grafted onto an unrooted rootstock cutting and the whole union is rooted in a single step — grafting and propagation at once. The name joins stekken (to root a cutting) and enten (to graft).
T-budding, then Miniplantas — South America. A single bud of the variety is grafted onto the rootstock and young plants are raised from there. Stenting isn’t used in the region; it built its own way.
Different methods, one result: the variety you know, on a PRO root system.
And it fits the farm you already have — a rose that produces more simply eats a little more. We breed rootstocks, not farming advice, but growers have shared what works for them: their feeding notes are here — observations, not a recipe.