Great idea, Denise. My two favorite movies are "French Kiss" and "A Good Year". They're on my DVR, and I watch them regularly. They have caused me to fall in love from afar with the French countryside. If I were younger (and had money) I think I would want to move there and have a large tract of land (2 to 5 acres). I would love to see the European gardens and American gardens, too. Unfortunately, Europe ain't happenin' and an American tour is unlikely. But I can dream over photos. Can't wait for everybody's links and photos.

Sherry

Every season is different, but I think there is no wrong season to visit the Historic Rose Garden in the Sacramento City Cemetery.

Jeri

Jeri
I just tried to find your garden on that site and it's not listed. Boo. I tried to send an email asking how to add it and the email didn't want to go thru.

Yes your garden is on my bucket list. Anytime.

Denise

Well, it ain't MY garden . . .
I guess you might say it belongs to the people of Sacramento?

The garden's official website is:
http://www.oldcitycemetery.com/roses.htm

Below, see the garden in different seasons.

Jeri

Here is a link that might be useful: Historic Rose Garden In Different Seasons

Jeri, what is the orange bush? Crepuscule? Amazing!

Sherry

The orange bush in the December photo?
No, that is a particularly magnificent [probable species] pyracantha.
I want that, rather badly.
I can just imagine it blazing away, somewhere down the hill, in the winter, when the roses are at their comparative quietest.

Jeri

The added joy of pyracantha in zones 9-10 is that when the berries ripen, (aka the birds start frequenting the bush to get drunk) berries harvested then make a really great redorange jelly.

Back to roses.

Sherry,
Rose gardens in the southeast may not have the century of patina that some of Europe's classics have, but we have some treasures of our own.

Have you visited the OGR collection that Malcolm Manners has planted in Lakeland all around the university there?

Goodwood Plantation north of Tallahassee has a plant sale every spring and established plantings that match the house.

For big rose collections, the Edisto Gardens at Orangeburg SC encompass three to four thousand modern roses and I understand they are going to add noisettes there, as well.

In Charleston SC, there is the Noisette Planting at Hampton Park as well as the Rose Trail in the city and the plantings that Ruth Knopf created at Boone Hall Plantation.

In Atlanta, the Atlanta Botanical Garden has a maturing planting of OGRs that (I heard last week) are coming along nicely.

In Alabama I need to visit the city gardens in Birmingham and Huntsville.

Gosh, where else...so many:

Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis
Royal National Botanical Garden in Burlington Ontario
Montreal Botanical Garden (in the heart of the city)
Hershey Gardens, east of Harrisburg PA
Brooklyn Botanical Garden
NY Botanical Garden
The garden west of Canton Ohio has the best collection and growning conditions I've ever seen for moss roses-- Anita will remember the full name
The cemetery gardens in Lynchburg VA
The Leonie Bell Noisette Garden in Charlottesville VA
Did the David Austin collection just north of NYC ever evolve into a mature garden?

I could go on and on and then there are the cemeteries....

We've been to the cemetery gardens in Lynchburg, VA. We were there only in spring, but it is well worth a visit.

And how about the great Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, CO. THAT is a spring place, for sure, as it has many once-bloomers. But it was well worth our time on an afternoon in July.

Jeri

Here is a link you may enjoy.

Kathy

Here is a link that might be useful: I love Gardens

Great list, Ann!

The Heritage Rose Foundation has also collected a list of gardens to visit in the USA. We haven't posted it on the website yet but it's coming. Its great strength is that it reflects strong collections of roses by class around the country as well as general collections.

And, my garden isn't in the top gardens of the world category, but I love it and you're all welcome to come visit when you can. The roses love visitors.

Sue

I have spent a long time over the lists of gardens of the world, a very sentimental journey for me. I travelled a lot when I was young and although I was't interested in gardening then I find that I have visited many of the listed gardens in India and Iran, by accident. No Turkish gardens are listed but the gardens at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul are well worth visiting. One garden I am sure I will never see again is Babur Shah Garden in Kabul, Afghanistan, but I have a faded photo of myself in it from the winter of 1968.

I was in Paris in October with my oldest grandchildren and the only garden I got a chance to visit was the garden at the Musée de Branly, the new etnographical museum where we had a picknick. The most interesting features there are the vertical gardens by Patrick Blanc. There are several others in Paris, and one in New York. Don't miss it if you have a chance. I notice that Disneyland Paris is listed among the French gardens and of course I spent a day there with the grandkids but I am afraid I didn't think of it as a garden.

I haven't visited as many gardens as I'd like but my favourites are the Filoli Garden and Hakone Gardens, both in California, the Borromean gardens in Lake Maggiore, Isola Bella and Isola Madre, El Generalife, the Moorish garden in Granada, Spain, Chateau de Villandry in the Loire valley and Karl Foerster's garden in Potsdam, Germany.

The only rose gardens I have visited outside Scandinavia are Mottisfont Abbey and Queen Mary's Rose Garden, Regents Park in London. Now that I am retired I hope to see many more rose gardens in Europe.

anntb
I have printed out your wonderful rose garden list to keep in our van. Family visits and vacations means we travel up and down I-95 once or twice a year and I keep a list of places to stop if we are near.

I especially like smaller gardens, the great big ones are just overwhelming.
Although they have no roses the Four Arts garden in Palm Beach is a jewel box of beauty. I grew up in West Palm Beach and this was the first place of real beauty I can remember. It's such a small garden it would never make it onto any list.

Thanks Ann and others who have taken the time to list rose gardens to visit.

Denise

BTW I have read "1,000 Gardens to visit before you die" but what I really want is "100 small but fantastic rose gardens to visit"

Every wonderful place that you visit stays with you for your entire life. I saw a study once that said people don't take real joy in buying things, but in buying(or not) experiences. These gave true lasting joy. I love seeing gardens big or small at anytime during the year.

The size of a garden has very little if anything to do with its beauty. The rose gardens in the former kitchen garden at Mottisfont Abbey are not at all large and Karl Foerster's garden is a family garden around a family home. El Generalife is probably smaller than my own halfacre. The largest rosarium I've visited is Sangerhausen which is not beautiful at all and was never meant to be other than a museum for roses although they are redesigning parts of it as the number of visitors is increasing. It is not a rose garden unlike Mottisfont which is both a collection of roses AND a rose garden.

Pam - what a wonderful sentiment. So true, but I had never thought of it. Experiences. Life's greatest joy. :)

Several more, and one of them just a hop, skip and a jump from I-95.

Riverbend Gardens at the Riverbend Zoo in Columbia SC. This place is a jewel with a water garden (and short waterfalls) and a wonderful collection of huge roses. It has possibly the largest La Mortola in North America as wall as mature noisettes growing over swings. Companion plants are also a strength there.

The original Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham Texas is a must. There are many different rose rooms there, and there I sat for the first time with no other people and just surrounded by roses. I wish you all could share that feeling.

I didn't include the AARS rose test gardens in my list, because they are more modern roses than older roses. But if you have one nearby, you might want to check on one of the plants there this year because it's from England and one of the new roses emerging from Hulthemia. For those who haven't read about this enchanting rose-relative that doesn't look a whole lot like a rose, it comes from a species rose (Hulthemia) in the middle east where it's a weed. (Or at least where it used to be a weed). The foliage is unrose like, but the killer distinction is that the petals have a darker colored blotch at the base of each petal. Right now, a number of hybridizers are crossing it with roses; the late Ralph Moore introduced a series of "Persian" roses with blotches; now there's a rose in the AARS test program with blotches. Anyway, sometimes some non-HT roses find their way into the AARS gardens, and they are going to be more interesting gardens in the future as I heard that they are not going to be sprayed now.

Wave Hill I make a trek up about twice a year it's about 2 to 3 miles from the NY Botanical Gardens. The Planting Fields on Long Island is quite nice. I'm always either at NY or Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. The Conservatory Garden in Central Park can be sweet and has appeared in a few movies. There are small gardens at The Cloisters in northern Manhattan about 3 miles south of Wave Hill perched above the Hudson.

Marianne, I remember your visit so well - I wish we could have spent more time together. Come back one day.

Pamela and Michael and Gregg will be here in a week or so - proving that a true gardener will see the worth of a garden in any season! I don't know what we'll be doing, but we'll 'do it large' as the Londoners say.

Nowadays, I find the first essential for a great garden is a good restaurant :) But my favourite - apart from the obvious, which I am much too polite to mention - the last few years has been Buscot Park in Oxfordshire where, apart from a wonderful garden, there is a superb collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings including Burne-Jones's 'The Briar Rose' which covers three walls of the Saloon

{{gwi:321970}}
We had a lovely time there with Paula (Rosefolly)and Tom in early June this year.

Best wishes
Jon

Here is a link that might be useful: The Briar Rose

Oh! Now I want to go there. I love the Pre-Raphaelites.

If I ever do a garden tour of England I know I will want to visit Sissinghurst!

The garden west of Canton Ohio has the best collection and growning conditions I've ever seen for moss roses-- Anita will remember the full name

Ann, is that anywhere near Ohio State (Columbus)? I apologize for not knowing OH geography very well. Somewhere within hollering distance of Ohio State's main campus there's a nice rose garden. I've been there when it was in full bloom, but unfortunately I remember neither its name nor its location.

Also, if anyone makes plans to see the rose garden in Hershey, PA (worth the trip), you owe it to yourself to add an extra day to your visit so you can drive the approx. 2 hours to Kennett Square, PA and spend the day at Longwood Gardens!! It's not an arboretum (like Brooklyn or the NY Botanical Gardens, or Missouri Botanical Gardens, or the National Arboretum), which are the botanical equivalent of zoos. They're places where botanists can go to see what the plants they're studying look like in real life (as well as beautiful gardens). Instead, Longwood Gardens is specifically a horticultural display garden, devoted exclusively to the pleasures of gardening itself. {{gwi:321962}} (this is a "courtyard" of American Pillar, but there's also a formal rose garden elsewhere, as well as other examples of roses in gardens), and a lot more besides. No matter what time of year you visit there is always something in bloom (whether {{gwi:321965}}, {{gwi:321966}}, or both).

(Apologies for going on so, but I'm a bit of a fan since I grew up 15 minutes drive from there, and it figured in a very real way in my decision to get a bachelors degree in horticulture.)

Oh! I forgot to add that if you are considering visiting Boston you should add the Arnold Arboretum to your itinerary! It isn't well noted for its roses (although you'll certainly find examples of nice species roses), but it is well noted for its beautiful trees & shrubs. In particular, the lilac & {{gwi:321968}} displays in the spring (which may be June rather than May) should not be missed!

(The witch hazel "Arnold's Promise"? That was bred at the Arnold Arboretum.)

If you're interested in a garden of rocks, southern Utah has some of the most spectacular rock formations and colors I've ever seen. Definitely a xeriscape garden, though. :)

York,
The one I was trying to remember is the Garden of Legend and Romance just south of Wooster Ohio in an Ohio State Ag farm. I never thought to see such magnificent sprays of moss roses. I remember them as if it were yesterday.

Farther to the south in Lexington KY is a huge almost sinfully overlooked rose garden of several thousand different cultivars including lots of garden roses, old garden roses and a collection of species roses from Kentucky in the Kentucky Arboreteum just north west of the UK football stadium. I wish I lived closer to this one and I am embarrassed that I only rememberd it today...but I don't think it has much overlap with our southeastern resources. It's a zone colder than my garden.

Morris Arboreteum northwest of Philadelphis...enclosed by one of the most intimidating deer fences anywhere....where the rosarian showed me what Midge looks like and talked about how they had worked to get rid of it in their plantings....

If you are in the DC metro area, you might want to look up the American Rose Society monthly magazine from in the early 2000's for a series of excellent articles that Kathy George wrote about DC rose gardens for the (then upcoming) national rose shoe.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden of Legend and Romance

Garden of Legend and Romance just south of Wooster Ohio in an Ohio State Ag farm

Ann, I am not certain, but based on the pictures at the link I suspect that's where I was. (If so, the roses are much larger now since I visited just one or two late springs ago.) I don't remember noticing the Moss roses, but I was there during the late spring rose explosion, and wasn't thinking about examining any particular set of roses. Consequently it would have been easy for me to miss what you noticed about the Moss roses. I know that many of the Moss roses are closely related to the Centifolias, and generally speaking I don't care at all for the growth habit of the Centifolia roses (even as the voluptuous flowers can be to die for). Consequently I doubt I would have paid much attention to that group of roses (or the Moss roses that resembled them).

I do remember noticing the abundance of "antique roses" in the beds! Most of the roses were "modern", but it seemed to me an unusually large quantity of the roses were "antique roses", or species.

Despite having grown up near Longwood Gardens, I must confess (to my shame) that I have never visited the famous Morris Aboretum............... :(

Swarthmore College also has a respected arboretum that I've never visited.

Another significant garden in the Philadelphia area that I have not yet visited is Winterthur, in northern Delaware. (It's actually close to Longwood Gardens.)

Heres some fall foliage shots from both NY and Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. NY Botanical Gardens contains 50 gardens on 250 acres as well as the LuEsther T Mertz Library which has an on line site for research.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fall

Fabulous photos Joe! I knew you had to have more of that heron.
I wish NYC wasn't so far away. I'd come visit more often.

Here in Fla. there is a wonderful rose garden in Sarasota at the Ca-de-Zan (?) home of Ringling, his wife had a huge garden... another is at Epcot and Disney, in Orlando.. they developed the rose Belinda's Dream specifically for the Fla. climate... another is in Largo, which is a Rose testing garden ofr AARS, on Indian Rocks Rd., in an old cemetery...... sally