A ROSE growers' society that started life as a pub joke 36 years ago and grew to be the best of British has withered and died.

Membership of the Grey Mare Rose Society dwindled to such an extent that the few hardy souls left just couldn't keep it going.

Although the Grey Mare Dahlia Society, which began life at the same watering hole in Tottington Road, Harwood, is still going, the rose society has been wound up.

Its roots go back to 1964 when Ken Morris, former head of Farnworth's Cherry Tree Primary School, walked into a dahlia meeting at the Grey Mare with a rose in his lapel.

Someone thought they could grow better roses-- and the gauntlet was thrown down.

Blooms were "staged" in empty beer bottles on a spare table and from that moment on, roses just grew on the pub pals.

Soon the subject of roses, greenfly, fertilisers, hybrids and pruning were the main topics of pub conversation and it was decided to start a proper society.

Such was its success that its members triumphed not just in local shows but in the country's prestige events such as the shows at Chelsea, Southport and Harrogate.

The pub was no longer big enough to stage the society's own shows, so it switched from an upstairs room at the Grey Mare to large halls such as Longsight Methodists.

One member, Tony Bracegirdle from Ramsbottom, is still regarded as one of the foremost rose growers in Britain and is a top international judge. Other top names were Joe Worsley from Bolton, Donald Coates of Clitheroe and Dick Squires of Liverpool.

Ken Morris said: "The decline really started a few years ago when the pub was altered inside and it became impossible to have a show there. We moved to church halls but it never really worked."

The few remaining funds of the society were transferred to the North-west group of the National Rose Society and any Harwood members that wanted it were given a year's free membership.