Stick your head out the window. You don’t have to be full-on family dog weird about it–just poke it out there and see what the weather’s like. Is it a warm day, no sidewalks buried in snow drifts or ice hazard traffic advisories? Then odds are good that the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden should be somewhere in the top three lines of your list of destinations. There are over 4,000 rose specimens in this collection alone, and while spring is the season when visitors are most often scrambling to get a peek (understandably, as roses are like smelling salts after the listless gloom of winter), many people don’t realize that there’s a confetti of colorful rose cultivars blooming at the NYBG for a solid six months out of the year.

Skip over to the Rose Garden right now (while the weather is almost confusingly decent, hence the skipping; I’m talking sit-outside-for-lunch pleasant) and you’ll find the stage set with a show of shrub roses in pinks, whites, and reds. Floribunda, grandiflora, hybrid tea–they’re all there, petaled like petticoats and parasols.
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The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden may have the most stage presence, but off in the Earth-Kind® Rose Trial beds, understudies are practicing for their shot at the spotlight. These starlets aren’t pampered, either; they’re thriving without the chemical coddling that so many roses are notorious for.

When they’re done with their auditions (I’m really pushing the tasteful limits of this conceit, aren’t I?), those that make the cut could become available as choice breeds for rosarians frustrated with the tending trends of more high-maintenance varieties.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.

Our discussions of vegetable gardens are going to be temporarily cut short due to the glorious activity in the world of roses. For the past week, the NYBG‘s Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden has been in peak bloom, exuding a luxurious perfume that can be experienced from a distance.

This past Saturday, The New York Botanical Garden joined the Manhattan Rose Society in hosting the 12th annual Great Rosarians of the World symposium. They may sound like an imposing, exclusive collective, yet they are a jovial group that welcomes even the most casual rose grower. The symposium is open to the public and offered as a course in our Continuing Education catalog.
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This is what the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden looks like at its best! Can you believe those climbers scrambling over the pergola? And the white and pink clouds of shrub roses filling out the beds between every bordering path. The weather’s looking to be easy-going this weekend, and this kind of pomp and circumstance won’t stretch out forever–just a heads up, New York.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Do you like your roses best when they’re in full-blown full bloom?

Shrub Rose ‘Sophy’s Rose’ (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)

Or …

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Rosarians can loose their bated breath, winter-long as it’s been. The single blooming rose from last week is joined by friends! Humble shrub roses now, yet so much more to come as the season wears on.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

This just in: The first rose of the year has bloomed in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. Let’s hear a round of applause for Rosa blanda!

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Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.

Rosarian Ken Molinari offers pointers on proper pruning techniques.

Pruning climbing roses is akin to a good spring cleaning. When things pile up in the home, there is nothing like a quiet winter weekend to dive into the mess and de-clutter. It is precisely what rosarians in the Northeast do with their climbing roses at this time of year.

In order for a magnificent climbing rose to look its best, proper care is necessary. Recently I spent a delightful day with NYBG rosarian Ken Molinari, pruning our climbers and discussing roses in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. We have so many roses here that we like to get out early and start pruning. Find a warm day in February or early March to step outside and go to work on your climbers.
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Not long ago we introduced you to a new Plant Talk series we’re calling “Past in Focus,” in which we unearth historical photographs from the LuEsther T. Mertz Library archives and attempt to recapture the scenes as they appear today. A century-old landscape undergoes any number of changes at the hands of time, weather, and ambition, leaving us drawn in by details large and small that remain untouched. You can look at these photographs and–even if only just–make out the origins of the design beneath the carefully-tended aesthetic.

In 1916, the tract surrounding the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden was a plane of graded soil following an idea on paper:

Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden -- November 16, 1916

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The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden is a symphony of color, aroma, and texture in June, so we sent our intrepid Visual Specialists way high up into the air to capture all the beauty.

The Air Up There

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