America's Rose Garden
The center's Mission & Vision statement is "Presenting the Rose, America's National Floral Emblem, in a natural setting of majestic pines and companion plants - for pleasure, education, and for the preservation and understanding of the beauty and significance of our favorite flower, the Rose."
The gardens feature roses of all types: the most modern hybrid tea roses, miniature roses, single petaled roses, heritage roses and species. The gardens are recognized as the largest park in the United States dedicated to roses.
The American Rose Center has supported the development and use of sustainable growing practices that do not degrade the environment; the grounds include a test garden for disease-resistant Hybrid Tea roses to demonstrate that exhibition-form roses can be grown without chemical intervention. [5]
Annual events include [6] an Easter Egg Hunt, Evening of Wine & Roses, horticulture symposiums, Green Thumb seminars, Spring Bloom, Angel of Hope Candlelight and Healing Ceremony annually on December 6, and Christmas in Roseland. Christmas in Roseland has been held every December since December 1983. [7] [8]
Rosie, a working dog and designated member of the staff, was used for several years to keep wildlife out of the gardens, particularly deer which can cause a lot of damage to the plants. [9]
In 2016, the center dropped their fees for commercial and professional photographers, actively promoting the use of the gardens for proms and wedding photography. [10]
In 2018, the gardens hosted the dedication ceremony for the U.S. Postal Service's newly issued Forever stamp celebrating the Peace Rose. [11]
American Rose Society
The American Rose Society (ARS) is a nonprofit corporation in Louisiana [12] (formerly of Ohio [13] and Pennsylvania [14] ) which owns the property of The American Rose Center. [15] The gardens have been the home and national headquarters of the American Rose Society since 1974, when the non-profit organization moved from Columbus, Ohio, and before that, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Society was founded in 1892 in Harrisburg.
According to the ARS bylaws, [16] their objectives are:
"to encourage amateur and professional rose culture; to provide rose horticulture education for ARS members and for the public; to increase the general understanding of and interest in all aspects of roses, including but not limited to the history of roses, hybridization, growing, exhibiting, artistic designing and judging, research, and thereby to improve the standard of excellence of the rose for all people; to record, publish and establish priority on rose cultivar names, and rose cultivar ratings."
ARS held its first rose show in 1900, [17] and accredits judges for rose shows. Accreditation requires experience with growing roses, successful exhibition of roses, working as a show clerk, completing an accredited judging school, passing an exam, and apprenticing under an accredited judge. [18]
ARS publishes several periodicals including American Rose magazine and American Rose Annual, and has published or co-authored several books such as Encyclopedia of Roses, Handbook for Selecting Roses: A Rose Buying Guide, A Guide to Creating Rose Arrangements, Standardized Rose Names, Guidelines and Rules for Judging Roses, Guidelines for Judging Rose Arrangements, and Consulting Rosarian Reference Manual. [19]
Since 1955, the American Rose Society has been the designated International Cultivar Registration Authority for the Rosa genus, [20] and maintains an online database called the Modern Roses Database. [21] Guided by the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants, the registration process prevents duplicate use of cultivar names, and ARS is charged with ensuring that new names are formally established. [22]
Restoration project
In 2017, ARS created a five-year master plan for the total restoration of the gardens called the Great Garden Restoration project. [2] [23] The project is a complete makeover for the gardens, consolidating the rambling multiple gardens into one core garden suitable for visitors. The project calls for the cutting back some of the encroaching pine forest and installing deer fencing. [6]
The design for the garden layout resembles the gears of a vintage watch and the theme is "The History of the Rose in America". [6] The design includes the stories of great roses such as Peace which has been the parent of many roses through hybridization, and Yellow Rose of Texas which traversed the country with early settlers of America. The story of the Grandiflora and Miniflora classes will be told, and the mission of "Rose Rustlers" who locate and preserve old lost roses found in cemeteries and old homesteads. [24]
Part of the garden is dedicated to the "Father of the American Rose Society" J. Horace McFarland, an early leader, editor and publisher for the organization. [25] This area of the gardens was named "McFarland Plaza" and a rose was named in his honor. [23]
The American Rose Society will name the new garden America's Rose Garden, home of America's national floral emblem, the rose. [23]
Other parts of the master plan include reaching botanical garden status, becoming recognized on the National Register of Historic Places, and becoming established internationally as a rose trial garden. [23]
Broccoli is an edible green plant in the cabbage family whose large flowering head, stalk and small associated leaves are eaten as a vegetable. Broccoli is classified in the Italica cultivar group of the species Brassica oleracea. Broccoli has large flower heads, usually dark green, arranged in a tree-like structure branching out from a thick stalk which is usually light green. The mass of flower heads is surrounded by leaves. Broccoli resembles cauliflower, which is a different but closely related cultivar group of the same Brassica species.
Iris is a flowering plant genus of 310 accepted species with showy flowers. As well as being the scientific name, iris is also widely used as a common name for all Iris species, as well as some belonging to other closely related genera. A common name for some species is flags, while the plants of the subgenus Scorpiris are widely known as junos, particularly in horticulture. It is a popular garden flower.
The pecan is a species of hickory native to the southern United States and northern Mexico in the region of the Mississippi River.
Hibiscus syriacus is a species of flowering plant in the mallow family, Malvaceae. It is native to south-central and southeast China, but widely introduced elsewhere, including much of Asia, both in the east and the west. It was given the epithet syriacus because it had been collected from gardens in Syria. Common names include the rose of Sharon,, Syrian ketmia, shrub althea, and rose mallow. It is the national flower of South Korea and is mentioned in the South Korean national anthem.
Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, known colloquially as Chinese hibiscus, China rose, Hawaiian hibiscus, rose mallow and shoeblack plant, is a species of tropical hibiscus, a flowering plant in the Hibisceae tribe of the family Malvaceae. It is widely cultivated as an ornamental plant in the tropics and subtropics, but its native range is Vanuatu.
Hydrangea quercifolia, commonly known as oakleaf hydrangea or oak-leaved hydrangea, is a species of flowering plant in the family Hydrangeaceae. It is native to the southeastern United States, in woodland habitats from North Carolina west to Tennessee, and south to Florida and Louisiana. A deciduous shrub with white showy flower heads, it is grown as a garden plant, with numerous cultivars available commercially.
The Royal National Rose Society (RNRS) (1876-2017) was a specialist horticultural organization in the United Kingdom dedicated to the cultivation and appreciation of roses. Founded in 1876 as the "National Rose Society", it was the world's oldest plant society. It was a membership organisation, with members drawn from professional and amateur gardeners and horticultural businesses. Originally based in London, the rose society moved its headquarters to Chiswell Green, near St Albans, Hertfordshire in 1959, where it created the Royal National Rose Society Gardens. In 1965, the society changed its name to the "Royal National Rose Society" (RNRS). At the height of its popularity, the RNRS had 100,000 members and its gardens contained 30,000 rose shrubs. The organisation was dissolved in May, 2017 and the gardens were closed permanently.
The Diocese of Shreveport is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church covering the parishes of northern Louisiana in the United States.
The Peace rose, formally Rosa 'Madame A. Meilland', is a well-known and successful garden rose. By 1992, over one hundred million plants of this hybrid tea had been sold. The cultivar has large flowers of a light yellow to cream color, slightly flushed at the petal edges with crimson-pink. It is hardy and vigorous and relatively resistant to disease, making it popular in gardens as well as in the floral trade.
The American Elm cultivar Ulmus americana 'Jefferson' was cloned from a tree growing near a path in front of the Freer Gallery of Art, close to the Smithsonian Institution Building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The United States National Park Service, which had planted the tree during the 1930s, cloned it in 1993 after screening tests showed that it possessed an outstanding level of tolerance to Dutch elm disease (DED).
A rose garden or rosarium is a garden or park, often open to the public, used to present and grow various types of garden roses, and sometimes rose species. Designs vary tremendously and roses may be displayed alongside other plants or grouped by individual variety, colour or class in rose beds. Technically it is a specialized type of shrub garden, but normally treated as a type of flower garden, if only because its origins in Europe go back to at least the Middle Ages in Europe, when roses were effectively the largest and most popular flowers, already existing in numerous garden cultivars.
The Europa-Rosarium, formerly the Rosarium Sangerhausen, is a municipal rose garden located in Sangerhausen, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. With 8300 cultivars and species it is one of the largest rose collection in the world, playing an important role as budwood source and in research. In 2003 it was granted the Award of Garden Excellence by the World Federation of Rose Societies.
Rosa 'Ingrid Bergman' is a red hybrid tea rose, bred by the Danish rose growers Pernille and Mogens Olesen and introduced by their company Poulsen Roser in 1984. It is a cross between the red hybrid tea 'Precious Platinum' and an unnamed seedling. It was named in honor of the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982).
Rose trial grounds or rose test gardens are agricultural areas where garden roses are grown to be assessed for qualities such as health, floriferousness, novelty, and scent.
A rose show is a horticultural exhibition focusing exclusively on roses.
Rosa'Constance Spry' is a light pink shrub rose introduced into Great Britain in 1961. It is the first rose cultivar commercially developed by British rose breeder, David C.H. Austin. 'Constance Spry' was introduced at a time when the shrub rose was out of style, the hybrid tea rose being the most popular rose with gardeners. The new cultivar renewed the popularity of the more old fashioned type of rose.
Eriocapitella × hybrida is a hybrid of flowering plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. The parents of the hybrid are E. japonica and E. vitifolia. Cultivars of the hybrid are commonly known as Japanese anemone hybrids.
