I don't know when the roses there were planted. I'm guessing some could be a hundred years old...maybe older. There's something perverse about destroying someone's living memorial to their loved one, especially if it's been around for a very long time. It's like defacing a tombstone.

These people probably can't walk and chew gum at the same time, or else they may think it's a travesty to do so.

This same Tom Liggett? I’ve only read articles about the Sacramento Cemetary as they’ve passed my way, hard to reconcile all the articles with each other.

Yes, that is him Ben. Envy.

A name used for the commonly employed arrangement of evenly spaced heavily pruned shrubs with bare or mulched unplanted bed area between is "tombstone planting" - it's only natural that in an actual cemetery the idea that the setting should consist primarily of monuments with open space around each would eventually come to prevail. Even in this particular cemetery, after all this time - maybe if asked about it Liggett might even say he was trying to effect a compromise, to make the best of a bad situation. That the involved cemetery management would just as soon have primarily monuments in mown grass there, as is the dominant approach elsewhere.

Erasmus. The garden was far, far closer to the original concept of that cemetery . . . You're thinking of Forest Lawn. This was not that.

It was a place of peace with beautiful flowering plants, mostly put there by the families of the people buried there. It was THIS:

And they destroyed it.

@Embothrium There was very little grass to mow in this cemetery, i.e., no large, flat expanses of turf in which tombstones are embedded, so "easier maintenance" arguments, or ones that cite some "dominant" cemetery style don't really hold water. I don't know what you call the Historic Cemetery's style, which is sort of unique and old-fashioned, where the plots were situated within raised beds in rows, much like some formal gardens might have. Here is a photo (from this news story) that was taken shortly after the massacre, that gives an idea of the layout:

Prior to the massacre, each of these beds might have contained at least one rose or several (some of the raised beds are larger than others), and there would have been arches over the paths, here and there, with spectacularly-trained climbers providing both shade and a vertical element. The roses were so healthy, and well-cared for by the volunteers, making this bit of Sacramento and these final resting places, at least, something like an Eden, a rather counter-intuitive notion, for California natives at least, who well know what the Central Valley is like during its bone-dry, hotter-than-Hades summers, or any other time of the year, for that matter (i.e., ugly, industrial agriculture at massive scales with some of the worst air pollution in the U.S.) . How incredibly barren the place looks in this photo, compared to what was!

So many of the roses I have I was inspired to grow after seeing wonderful specimens of them up close and in person at the cemetery -- 'Le Pactole', "North Bloomfield Raspberry", and 'Lady Roberts', to name just a few off the top of my head. Would visit at least once or twice a year and enjoyed both the garden and viewing, reading, and contemplating the markers and monuments of those buried there -- there are many from California's earliest days as a state. Here I am, in 2013, looking at some big, beautiful pink tea there (not sure which one).

Catspa I see nothing in your picture of a sample of the current situation that contradicts anything I said - such depauperate austerity is what predominates in most cemeteries I have been to. (And I investigate most I encounter, because of the fact that sometimes there will be at least a few interesting old trees, shrubs or other remarkable plants present. Including sometimes even some roses). With it being typical for them to have signs up attempting to curb in some way even the decoration of individual graves by those visiting them. The world is full of people who think various different subject areas each have a single specific way they are to be undertaken, regardless of how pursuits of the same type might differ from one another in what particular details are involved. Consistent with this apparently somebody came to be in charge of the Sacramento site that thinks a cemetery is supposed to look like your first photo. As so many other burial grounds do.

Catspa was trying to explain Sacramento had a world class garden that some morons destroyed. We all know there are people like that who are rigid and do not appreciate natural beauty. This is a tragic story if I have ever heard one.

I was one of the people who wrote pleading for them not to do this. I've never been to this cemetery but so much enjoyed seeing many beautiful photos of all the glorious roses. It makes me ill to think that anyone could be so soulless as to order this done.

Jeri, I don't know what you mean about me mistaking Sacramento for Forest Lawn.

Embothrium, because cemeteries are mostly not as beautiful as the Sacramento one is no reason to bring down the Sacramento one. I do agree with you that it's an ideology that won...some kind of purist thinking that a cemetery must have a certain look.

I just really think the intentions of the original people who planted living memorials matter. It is a cemetery for THEIR loved ones. Historically, they planted roses as living memorials.

It could not have been just one person who made this happen. At least several people arrived at a consensus that wrecking the garden was good. It just goes to show that ideas are not proven good because several people think a thing.

It could not have been just one person who made this happen

The pyramid structure continues to be dominant in western cultures.

I have walked in our local graveyard every day, for over 45 years, and have seen these cycles as the various interest groups wax and wane. At the moment, we are in a wildlife phase after seeing off a so-called 'ecologist' who apparently wanted nothing more than the utter desecration of every single untended, wild inch, in favour of manicured grass and cleared graves. The Family History Group also drive this, considering the graves to be the sole reason for existence. Fortunately, my ward is one of the most built-up, urban areas of the city and the graveyard provides a vital 'green lung' for all residents and visitors (especially the insects and small mammals, as well as broomrapes and other plant oddities. So, the cemetery wildlife group is in the ascendant...for now. Nothing stays the same. The roses will grow...and after a hard pruning, often with great vigour. Life is very tenacious...more so than the deathly concrete, stone and unnatural imposed regularity.

Rosaprimula, thank you. I find your perspective very balancing, calming and hopeful. The Master of the universe keeps quietly doing His work and man’s erratic ways are not all-conquering after all.

I don't know. If they stop irrigating and keep cutting back the glory could be no more.

Sheila, that is so. There were roses and other things there once. Abandoned and not watered, most died. Only a fortunate few survive.

I would guess that we are now in that abandonment phase.

And after this destruction, why should any one try again. Ever.

The garden they have destroyed was planted with permission and assistance of the City, after all. Why, then, would anyone ever try again?

It is so heartbreaking, I can't stand it, Jeri.

What happened in Sacremento made and continues to make me feel ill.

It acturally can get worse. We had searched out two very old cemeteries in Tennessee. It seems that some places leave the bodies in the ground and gather up the grave markers. In one, the deeply weathered markers were stacked one on top of the other as if they were pancakes. In the other a wall around the cemetery was cemented and the graves glued onto that wall. Both were easier to mow afterwards. Insert profanities here.

So heartbreaking.

Yes Ann. I;ve heard of that. And there is a park a few miles North of me that is generally called "Cemetery Park." Guess why?

And yes. Any burials whose families could not afford to move them, or were no longer in the area, the headstones were removed, thrown in a creek a few miles away, and now they have a nice flat park they can mow.

Cemetery Park had roses. I know for a fact that cemetery had roses. I learned that from from old families.

That’s just ridiculous to erase old cemeteries like that. When we were in Ireland last year, we spent time visiting old cemeteries, much older than we have here. They are still being taken care of because they value their history. Some of the graves were from the 1500’s and perhaps even before that as some of the dates were so blurred by time that we couldn’t read them. Has our society completely lost respect and honor for our ancestors and history?

Certain Southern locales have a continuing history of racially segregated cemeteries with Black burial grounds not being given the same level of respect as Caucasian ones. To the extent that the former are even subject to redevelopment schemes.

It happens outside of the south, too, Embothrium. It's shameful.

Rosaprimula, I don't think they pruned the roses so hard in order to encourage them to rebound with great vigor. Life and the roses may be tenacious but it sounds like they are trying to get rid of them. If they come back vigorously I bet they'll whack them again.

In terms of my own garden, I can well imagine that someone in the future might buy my house and not want the garden. I am perfectly ok with that.

I have heard that in France people are buried in cemeteries but only for a certain amount of time. After awhile they dig you up to make room for someone else unless you're a famous person they like having around.

A cemetery in Natchez, MS has roses and they seem to value them as they have a group that looks out for them. It is a small amount of roses compared to the Sacramento garden. STill , they do add to the charm of the cemetery. One plant there was removed though...I don't know why. It was a huge plant that I think was Mrs. B.R. Cant. Seemed like it was 15' across. Looked like it was in perfect health. Here's a bloom:

I think it's wonderful to see these old plants surviving through so many years.

Yep, it is distressing, to see the casual destruction of so much love and care. I do think that some things are worth fighting for, though. My ex achieved a spot of local fame for throwing himself in front of the ride-on mowers, which were about to cut back a flourishing bit of calcareous grassland (He is a member of butterfly conservation). The cycles of tidiers and controllers, versus wildlife fecundity and serendipity do rise and fall as management and trustees retire or perspectives change...and in this age of climate awareness and sustainable planting (even though it is often greenwash), we need to be as resilient as nature and to be sneaky, if needed, with stealthy guerilla planting and community, bottom-up organising. Especially in our public spaces. Many voices, singing from the same page, rather than our individual, easily ignored pleas.

And possibly a bit less polite and deferential. We, in the UK, tend to be in thrall to authority, (all that forelock tugging to arostocracy) whereas I feel we need to read a bit from the French playbooks - they know how to go about the art of protest.

It was a huge plant

And that right there would be why it was removed. Same as when landmark trees are topped.

Shame they didn't just prune it. It COULD have been controlled.

I mean, I gave a rooted plant from our "Grandmother's Hat" to a neighbor. The mother plant is, like 8-by-12 . . . But her plant is sized like an HT (and yes, I taught her to prune).

Yeah, Embothrium, it could have been pruned if the size was the issue. I have to prune my Mrs. B.R. Cant which is right beside the street and can infringe on the street. It handles pruning just fine. Maybe the cemetery one had RRD or something. I don't have the info on it, just thought it was too bad it was gone. There is a rose group that helps with the roses in that cemetery. But I do think people who maintain the grounds all the time should be heard.

I would like to read something written by the people who decided to get rid of the Sacramento garden. I have read a little but not really much on their reasoning. I did read a little about how a lot of roses were added in fairly recent times. Maybe there was a power struggle between the cemetery directors and the rose garden group. Maybe the roses came to seem like the prime focus of the cemetery and the cemetery people wanted the prime focus to be the cemetery. Seems like a standoff, an all-or-nothing tug of war when maybe there could have been some changes that would have been ok with all.

The idea that roses in cemeteries are not historic is silly to me and obviously in this cemetery they were historic. But a lot of them were more recent additions .

If the cemetery doesn't want the garden, maybe some other place would? Seems they grow beautifully in that locale. I do think there's something special about beautifying a graveyard...they complement each other, the reminders of the passing of time, and the sometimes poignant statues among the roses.

So when one actually does a web search for the topic it appears the City calls it Old City Cemetery and the first page I looked at listed "lush gardens" as being one of its attractive features. Otherwise this City page about the facility mentions "beautiful landscaping" as being one of its charms - particularly since Liggett was brought in I have little doubt that the manager - note that a single party is indicated (below) as being the in-charge contact person - or somebody she answers to saw the whacking down and so forth as necessary upkeep being undertaken. And that the involved thinking also included the common idea that a proper rose is a modern bedding type like a Floribunda. With flowering stems springing directly out of the budhead and little in the way of a true shrub structure between the flowers and the ground. Let alone something above human head height and arching out over pathways. Or - gasp! - climbing up onto structures and obscuring them. Consistent with this assumption of mine that other page I got had a shot of a couple roses blooming among graves there, both were short, vertical and large flowered. City-Cemetery - City of Sacramento

What an absolute travesty, I can't comprehend why any rosarian would participate in such a desecration. I found Tom Liggett's email address online if anyone wants to share their thoughts on it with him.

With all respect, it will do no good.

Good things and freedoms and freedom to express ideas are under threat everywhere anything we value or was good in the past we have to fight for it now Never give up keep speaking the truth in the face of those who destroy it happens everywhere its a trauma and we can beat it were not helpless if we stick together to run the controllers out and make human life beautiful and thoughtful the garden could be restored but first the power hungry selfish controllers must go and others who would destroy and take away the beauty and the joy from others must never return its up to us to keep the past memory alive to be restored again by others sorry houzz won't let me use punctuation or all my words dissappear

Here's a C.S.Lewis quote:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

― C. S. Lewis

Degenerates abound. Some absolute hooligan has brutally girdled every single limb of a venerable and beautiful cherry laurel in my local graveyard - yes, I know, practically a weed tree, but this was over 100 year old and had assumed graciously spreading proportions. To climb into the canopy with a billhook and brutally hack EVERY SINGLE LIMB.

Plus, another outbreak of gravestone smashing and spray-painting. Very bloody p***ed off. Time for some guerilla planting. Looks through the tree saplings and rose cuttings...where I have at least half a dozen 'Pleine de Grace ' a monster Louis Lens rambler.

Wonderfully insightful quote from C.S Lewis! Thanks, Erasmus. I enjoy his writings a lot and my daughters collect his books.
Wish me well! I’m off to California this week with my family. Thursday is set aside on my calendar to spend a good part of the day observing the results of the Liggett butchery. It looks like it will be a wet day and I think I’ll need a rain coat. Oh well, likely I’ll have the place all to myself which I won’t mind at all. Hopefully I will be able to get some pictures in spite of the rain.

@rosaprimula Too true about hooligans, especially those armed with pruning implements, simplistic notions about trees and shrubs, and apparent, pathetic needs to wield absolute control. Cherry laurel is a "naturalized" tree/shrub (polite way ecologists say "weed") that I frequently see and admire along the coast here in California, where it doesn't get so blazing hot and dry as other parts of the state. They are handsome. Not familiar with 'Pleine de Grace' personally (doesn't seem to be sold in the U.S.), but it sure looks like such a beauty in its HMF photos, and white roses do look especially serene, pure, and in all ways appropriate for cemetery settings. A white rose often found in old cemeteries here is 'Alba Odorata', which is also a monster, with thorns among the most vicious in the rose world, bar none -- any vandal tangling with that one would come out worse from the experience, for sure.

@judijunebugarizonazn8 Bring the raincoat, or two. Yesterday we had 4.65" of rain, which is one third of what we typically get for an entire year, in one day -- some kind of record. Husband and I spent the entire day trenching, diverting water, setting up hose siphons...Significant so-called "atmospheric rivers" only happen every 5 to 10 years or so around here, so drainage systems tend to get somewhat neglected and deteriorated between events. Ours are now as fine-tuned as they get and ready, I hope, to deal with the continuing sequence of storms predicted for at least the next coming week. It is nice to see the landscape greening up again, finally, and pesky alkaline salts gettng leached and washed away.

I wonder if TL will include in his book his experiences with Gardenweb in its early days. How THE rule was, Not to be used for commerce. How Tom had a signature line that advertised roses he was selling. How he and Spike got into it.

Some of us remember those as the days that could have been better.

Oh, Anita. It was great talking to you.

Anita, thank you for giving us all this information. I am sorry thatit it all turned out the way it did. it

Thank you, Anita. I am grateful for your first hand account here on this forum as well as your email reply. I replied to your email as well as contacted the cemetery manager. Your input is valuable to me!

So the situation is pretty much as I anticipated in my last comment - what goes on in similar circumstances from one time and place to another can often be pretty predictable.

My plans for the garden have been derailed, unfortunately. Five large trees have fallen in this last storm and the Cemetery is closed. Beings there’s another storm hitting the area today and tomorrow, they don’t expect the gates to be open anytime soon because the tree crews will need time to clean everything up first. How disappointing! But such things are out of our control. It wasn’t meant to be this time.

Oh, that's really too bad, Judi. But as you said, maybe not meant to be.

I couldn’t completely stay away from the Cemetery…my husband obligingly took me by and I walked the perimeter fence, poking my phone through the fence for a few pictures. Notice the up-rooted trees. More are falling today.

A few roses are blooming and there is still an atmosphere of history and old beauty, but there were quite a few ghastly stumps of roses visible where once there were voluptuous bushes. How I longed to be able to walk those lanes, up and down! But alas, all the gates were indeed shut. I confess to rattling the pedestrian gate, but it ,too,was secured shut. A nice old gentleman who was doing some clean up (in the rain!) stopped to talk to me and apologize that it isn’t safe to walk through. All in all, as satisfying a visit as was possible just now.

I hope that the next time you're in the area you get a full visit, Judi. I'm glad you got to see a little through the gate.

A sad tale, Anita...and yes, the real tragedy here is the loss of community. Roses are immortal and will always continue to thrive but collective endeavour and mutual aid and friendship is to be treasured. Good to know that the roses have been propagated and will still give joy and pleasure to gardeners.

It's good to hear your first hand account, Anita.

When Anita found out that I would be unable to enter the Cemetery at all, she invited me to stop by her house to meet her and see her roses and take cuttings if I wanted. I was glad to take her up on her offer! I found her to be a very warm, comfortable person and I was impressed with the number of roses she has been able to squeeze in her backyard! I took cuttings of seven roses, including Barbara’s Pasture Rose, Etoile de Lyon and Blanche Lafitte. I am so pleased to have been able to meet her! And then, because my husband got stranded in traffic and was half an hour late, I was still there when friends she had invited for the evening arrived. I felt bad about that, but Anita was gracious and introduced me to her fellow rose friends. So just another time when good things come out of disappointment!

It was a pleasure to meet you, share cuttings and a walk through my winter garden, and have you join my friends for some holiday cheer! Louise Mitchell, the Cemetery Rose documentary maker, and Bill Harp, my neighbor who is featured in the film, were there, along with another friend who loves to garden but is not a rose person. I hope to meet others of you in the future.