By Clair Martin
This year we decided to move our annual Rose Festival from its usual date in spring to fall in conjunction with the Fall Plant Sale. Why you ask? Well, the best answer is that many people tend to only think of roses as spring or summer blooming flowers and ignore the beauty of fall roses. Fall can be spectacular--often the colors are intensified and many roses, especially the Teas and Chinas, outdo themselves at this time of the year. It has to do with the fact that once the stress of our hot, dry summers is over the roses take a breath and decide to put on one more big display.
The unseasonably heavy rains we experienced the week before the Festival didn't help any but the roses did respond and made a respectable showing.
For two days the Rose Garden was a center of activities. Docents were available to answer questions, lead tours, demonstrate the correct techniques for deadheading roses, and offered suggestions for extending the vase life of cut roses.
Rose Garden Docents, headed by Lisa Oddone, developed and staged several extremely popular family activities that were enjoyed by garden visitors of all ages.
 |
Visitors of all ages enjoyed making potpourri sachets in the Rose Garden |
This past summer Docents and Volunteers gathered rose petals for drying and making potpourri. Children of all ages were invited to create rose sachets using dried Huntington rose petals and pre-cut squares of netting and ribbon. To finish of their sachets we had labels that said 'I Made it Myself at the Huntington Rose Garden.' This particular activity was as popular with adults as it was with children!
We also held a rose themed Treasure Hunt for children and families. Treasure hunters were given a printed sheet with ten questions. All answers were roses growing in the garden. To help, we marked the appropriate roses with large bows on their plastic labels. Everyone who participated was given a prize. The choices were beaded bracelets that said 'I Love Roses' or 'I Love Bugs' and large plastic bugs. Interestingly we ran out of the most disgusting bugs first!
Rose and Herb Garden Volunteers Judy Polanski, Nancy Ferguson, and Myriam Hu experimented this past summer creating Rose Waters from a number of different roses in the collection. They provided us with samples for our display tables. Small containers of various Rose Waters were labeled and displayed with fresh petals from the matching roses and visitors were encouraged to do a smell test to see which waters they thought were the most fragrant.
Rose Garden Docents, Tuesday Volunteers, and Huntington Rose Workshop Volunteers manned the garden and displays for both days and toured and spoke to over 600 visitors. The weather was mild, warm, and sunny and all seemed to enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of fall in The Huntington Rose Garden.
Clair Martin, Curator, Rose and Perennial Gardens
Previous Article | Back to Contents | Next Article