My father, Joe Kennedy, was a plant breeder who spent more than three decades conserving old Irish primroses and growing new varieties using their DNA.
Formerly a dentist, he took up his project in retirement in the late 1980s, when he began crowdsourcing “wee pieces” of named primroses, some dating from the 19th century, from gardens all over Ireland.
Influenced by the experiments of Charles Darwin and Florence Bellis, founder of the American Primrose Society (1941), he began hand-pollinating thousands of seedlings every year. Most ended up on the compost heap but, as he told me, “it’s about waiting for something wonderful to happen”.
From his primrose stock Joe, who has died aged 90, gradually produced new, hardy perennial hybrids, including Primula Dark Rosaleen, with its bronze-coloured leaves and burgundy-striped flowers, and Primula Carrigdale, featuring double layers of white, crinkled blooms.
His plants were presented as gifts to Barack and Michelle Obama at the White House by the taoiseach Enda Kenny and his wife, Fionnuala, on visits in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
Joe was born near Rathoe in County Carlow, the youngest of the seven children of Arthur Kennedy, a farmer, and Mary (nee Farrelly), an amateur gardener. He attended Knockbeg college in Carlow before studying dentistry at University College Dublin, where he met Carmel Clarke, a student radiographer. In 1959 they married and moved to the UK, spending some time in Brockley, south London, before settling for good in Ballycastle in Northern Ireland in 1963.
A quiet seaside town, where Joe worked for the NHS as a schools dentist, Ballycastle was mostly sheltered from the the 30 years of the Troubles, but when a car bomb exploded outside a local church in 1973, Joe spent months treating dental injuries caused by the blast.
It was after retiring from dentistry in 1988 that he began working in earnest on breeding primroses. Although his primroses were regularly exhibited and much-admired at garden shows, he was not interested in the bedding plant trade and did not make much money from his creations, saying that they were his gift to the world.
A self-penned monograph recounting Joe’s work, Reminiscences of an Irish Primrose Breeder, was published in 2006, and in 2012 he appeared in an episode of BBC Gardener’s World with Carol Klein, also co-authoring in that year, with Brendan Sayers, a chapter on Irish primroses in the book Plandaí Oidhreachta – Irish Heritage Plants. In 2014 he was made an honorary member of the Irish Garden Plant Society for his outstanding contribution to Irish horticulture.
Away from plant breeding, Joe was a keen golfer and a talented artist. He also worked as a volunteer gardener for Corrymeela, the peace and reconciliation charity, for many years. A new primula named Joe’s Gift will be launched by the Irish Garden Plant Society this year.
He is survived by Carmel, his children, Paul, Joan, Seán, Owen and me, and eight grandchildren.
