The Promise Of
A Rose Garden
New Heritage
Display Begins To Take Shape At Elizabeth Park
By NANCY SCHOEFFLER, nschoeffler@courant.com
September 17, 2010
"Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz…"
Elizabeth Park's rosarian, Marci Martin, sang along with
Patti Curtin of Wethersfield as they dug big holes last
week in the hot sun.
Mike Fuss of Bloomfield joked that everyone else was
doing the hard work; "I just showed up to prune."
They were among a group of volunteers who replanted
about two dozen of Elizabeth Park's collection of old
roses, all developed before 1867 — Madame Zoetman's,
Tuscany Superb, Henri Martin, Empress Josephine, Rose du
Roi and Camaieux among them — in the newly redesigned
Heritage Rose Garden.
"It's not a good time of year to plant roses, but we're
planting them deep so the crown is protected over the
winter," Martin said, adding that the soil — a sandy
loam mixed with compost — was perfect for roses.
Re-creating the garden is the Connecticut Valley Garden
Club's centennial project. The centennial isn't until
2017, and by then the roses should be settled in and
glorious.
Beth Montgelas, the club's president, said the group
originally planned just to restore the garden, "but we
discovered it was not restorable. And the beds were not
big enough, so the scope of our project has changed."
Alice Prescott Whyte, an old-rose enthusiast who is
heading up the project, designed 10 raised beds edged in
stone walls that form the outline of a five-petaled
rosette. The rosette symbolizes a centifolia — a
100-petaled rose — to represent the garden club's
centennial, and Whyte said 100 old roses eventually will
be planted there. Some will be planted on umbrella
trainers so they cascade over like fountains, and others
will be pegged to the ground to form more mound-like
masses of blooms.
Montgelas said the new garden will be accessible to
people with disabilities, and the club also plans to
include signage that is accessible — in Braille and
possibly with bar codes that can be read by smart
phones.
Dave Peterson, president of the Friends of Elizabeth
Park — and third-generation owner of Peterson
Landscaping, which his grandfather, who had been a
gardener in the park, founded in 1929 — said the
Heritage Rose Garden is in one of the more intimate
corners of the park, but it was long underused. He's
confident that will change.
Whyte said the project will accept donations of older
roses from the Hartford area next spring. She also hopes
to get cuttings of antique roses from historic
landmarks, abandoned gardens and graveyards.
While many people think roses are a lot of trouble, old
roses are far more forgiving, Whyte said, pointing out a
few tough stragglers that were re-emerging from
underneath one of the new stone walls. "They're
vigorous. They can withstand winters. They've survived
wars."
Whyte, author of "The Roses of Elizabeth Park," said
there are very few heritage rose gardens in the country.
She hopes to amass as fine a collection as can be grown
in this climate and has lined up Stephen Scanniello,
president of the Heritage Rose Foundation and former
rosarian at the Cranford Rose Garden at the Brooklyn
Botanical Garden, as a consultant on the project.
Companies she enlisted to do the construction work have
been generous, Whyte added, including American Materials
Corp. in Bloomfield, The Bros. Landscaping of West
Hartford, Rainbow Sprinkler in Simsbury and Jimmy's
Masonry in the Oakville section of Watertown.
The recent advent of long-blooming Knockout roses has
knocked a lot of older roses out of favor, and Whyte
said nurseries that specialize in old roses are having a
tough time.
The park's original Heritage Rose Garden was created as
a test garden for the AARS in 1938 and mostly planted
with hybrid teas from the 1930s. The new garden will go
considerably further back in time and include the
Apothecary's Rose, which was developed before 1240 and
thought to have been brought to France by a returning
Crusader.
"We're saving history," Whyte said, "one rose at a
time."
Hartford Courant Copyright © 2010
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