By Monica Medina

On a Thursday morning in late October, about 150 people gathered in the gazebo of the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden in Balboa Park, and nearly all who did were Rosarians. Sharing a love and cultivation of roses, they came to honor and celebrate the life of Richard (“Dick”) Douglas Streeper, known to many as the “Rose Man.”

Dubbed as such because of a monthly column about roses that he wrote for the San Diego Union-Tribune for more than 20 years, Streeper died Oct. 14 at the age of 81. With his passing, San Diego lost another piece of its rich and colorful history, for Streeper, a lawyer by trade, was responsible for the creation of the rose garden in Balboa Park.

“Dick initiated the garden by working with the City Council in 1969, when he was president of the San Diego Rose Society,” recalled Sue Streeper, his wife of 53 years. “It took about five years to put it all together and for the city to approve it. With a grant from the Parker Foundation, and the city paying for half of the cost, Dick hired a landscape architect. It took six years, and in 1975, the Rose Society held the dedication.”

Over the years, Streeper gave of himself to the garden, overseeing just about every aspect of its maintenance and cultivation.

“Every month we’d have a meeting where he would tell us what to do for the coming month,” explained Bob Kolb, president of the San Diego Rose Society. “He’d talk about tools and how to keep them sharp, about pruning and also about what kind of gloves were good to use. He’d take us around the garden and elaborate on how he wanted it pruned. I remember some roses created a spray instead of one rose on a stem. He taught us how such plants won’t support that many flowers, so he would show us how to thin it out. He was very detail oriented.”

To help with the care of the garden, Streeper created the Rose Garden Corps, a group of volunteers that tend and nurture the rose garden.

“There used to be one city government gardener whose area was the rose garden and that person did it all,” explained his wife. “But with city budget cutbacks we came to rely on volunteers who work really hard to have the garden cleaned up, the older roses trimmed and the raking done. They come on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. They work very hard, with supervision from a city employee gardener.”

Currently, there are about 40 volunteers, mostly retirees, but according to Sue, the garden can always use more.

“Ideally it would be great to have 60 – 80 volunteers,” she said. “We encourage people to work in groups and match them up with people who have been here longer. We have a system where people are assigned to a certain section and take ownership for their part of the garden.”

When designing the rose garden, Streeper thought it important to keep the garden modest in size, in order to make it easier to keep. Yet, while 1,600 roses and 120 varieties may seem anything but manageable, it actually is when compared to other rose gardens, noted his wife.

“It’s small in terms of some public gardens that have a few thousand roses, like the one in Los Angeles [upwards of 20,000], and in Portland, Oregon [more than 10,000],” she said. “Those are huge. Dick wanted it to be limited in size. Maintenance is really important if you want it to be beautiful. He felt three acres is plenty.”

When deciding on the location in the park, Streeper aimed for visibility.

“The first couple of sites in the park that had been pointed out to him as possibilities were not visible enough,” explained Sue. “So he looked at this site, where the garden is now, and said yes. Then he smartly suggested that the curb along Park Boulevard be painted red so no one would park there, which made the garden’s visibility from the street complete.”

In most other climates, roses are in bloom for a short time, from mid-spring to fall. Here in San Diego, the season lasts longer, from April to December.

“We have the perfect climate here for rose gardens,” Sue said. “The roses slow down in November and December. We prune the garden and plant replacements in January, leaving just bare sticks in the ground.”

Kolb says that a floral show is in the works for Balboa Park’s Centennial.

“We will have a flower show on the Prado with all the floral societies represented — Gardenia society, Plummeria society, and all the rest. It’ll be held Mother’s Day weekend 2015 at the Balboa Park Club.”

Streeper has received numerous awards from the San Diego Rose Society. In 2013, both he and the Memorial Rose Garden, were each recognized with the GROW (Great Rosarians of the World) Award. Given by the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, the award is one of the most prestigious honors given in the rose industry.

“I think I learned everything I know about roses from working with my husband,” said Sue, whose home that she shared with her husband for 51 years, boasts a garden of 350 roses. “People trusted his judgment. He’d been doing roses for a long time, and was opinionated about how they should be grown. We will continue doing things in this garden according to the ‘Streeper Method.’ This means we try to have the roses in any given bed at the same height, keep as much color around the plants as much as possible so you don’t take off the old blooms until they’re falling apart. That’s the way he would have wanted.”

“Keep color on the plant as long as you can, was what he always said,” added Kolb. “Because of Dick, the Rose Garden Corp has learned a lot by being here, and that will continue just because the volunteers are dedicated and they know it’s important. For a lot of people, this is their garden.”

—Contact Monica Medina at [email protected] or follow @monicastangled on twitter.