Profile · Greenfield, Wisconsin
William J. Radler
Landscape architect and rose hybridizer who created the Knock Out rose in his Greenfield basement; longtime director of Boerner Botanical Gardens
$1 million
William J. Radler is the landscape architect who germinated America’s best-selling landscape rose under fluorescent lights on a ping-pong table in a Greenfield basement, with milk jugs catching the runoff. The Knock Out rose turned a parks career into a breeding empire without ever leaving the two-acre yard he called the Radler Rosarium. He earned a B.S. in landscape architecture from UW–Madison, then spent twenty-six years with Milwaukee County Parks, including thirteen as director of Boerner Botanical Gardens. He retired early in 1994 to breed full time from the Greenfield house he had built in 1983. Each year he made 500 to 1,000 crosses, grew 300 to 500 seedlings, and culled ruthlessly for disease, winter, and neglect in what he called rose boot camp. The survivor, ‘Radrazz,’ won the All-America Rose Selections award for 2000 as The Knock Out Rose: self-cleaning, black-spot stubborn, and blooming from frost to frost. Garden-club and botanic-garden copy puts worldwide sales above 90 million. His first royalty check, $60,000, was more than he had ever earned on salary. He patented dozens of varieties, formed Rose Innovations, LLC in 2002, and in 2013 pledged $1 million to the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin. Tours still run with the Greenfield Beautification Committee. He did not move to a rose capital; the roses moved out of Greenfield.