Por Priscilla Lister
So where can you see Love and Peace, Nancy Reagan, Betty Boop, the Wild Blue Yonder and Howdy Doody all in one place?
The Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden in Balboa Park, that’s where. Those five roses bloom in a beautiful garden offering almost 2,500 rose bushes of nearly 200 varieties on three acres across Park Boulevard from the Natural History Museum. Its location makes it a bit less known and less visited than other parts of Balboa Park. And right next door to the rose garden is the equally alluring Desert Garden where more than 1,300 succulents, cacti and other drought-resistant plants from around the world cover 2.5 acres.
Both of these public gardens — open all the time for free — make an excellent combined outing where you might grow to appreciate the amazing diversity among succulents while finding entertainment in the
delightful names bestowed upon roses.
Rose lovers will surely enjoy the rose garden, whose blooms may peak from April through early June, but still provide color from April through December because of San Diego’s mild climate.
You’ll find hybrid teas (the most popular, classic cutting rose variety usually with one bloom on a single long stem), floribundas (low-growing, bushy, hardy roses), grandifloras (a cross between hybrid teas and floribundas, the largest and tallest of rose bushes with blooms mostly in clusters, like floribundas), ramblers (climbing roses that can creep up arbors and trellises), shrubs and, the most fragrant of all, old garden roses (the ancestors of today’s varieties). This rose garden is an excellent place for home rose gardeners to discover the plants they might like to try in their own gardens. All the roses are labeled, so you can make lists of your favorite colors, leaves and bush types.
The rose garden is an officially designated All-America Rose Selections Display Garden where some of the newest varieties are tested and displayed.
In 2003, the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden was given an Award of Garden Excellence by the World Federation of Rose Societies, and in 2004 that group named it one of the 16 best public rose gardens in the world. Today it’s one of 35 rose gardens worldwide to receive that group’s annual excellence award — one of only four in the U.S.
ROSE GARDEN HISTORY
Inez Parker and her husband, Gerald T. Parker, were longtime Kansas City residents where he was a vice president at the Commerce Trust Co. She was a prominent horsewoman and supporter of Kansas City’s Nelson Art Museum. When the couple moved to San Diego, they demonstrated the same commitment to community and supported many organizations here. When Mr. Parker died in 1971, his widow established the Parker Foundation. When she died in 1972, the balance of her estate was transferred to the foundation, which continues to support many institutions in San Diego.
The garden opened in 1975 and was “planned to be a model municipal rose garden that would stand the test of time in good as well as hard times of municipal and park department funding,” says the World
Federation of Rose Societies on its Web site.
The San Diego Rose Society, an affiliate of the American Rose Society, which is a member of the world federation, was one of the founders of the Balboa Park rose garden and continues to help support it.
The local rose society (www.sdrosesociety.org) sponsors the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden Summer Tour on Aug. 29 at 9:30 a.m. at the north end of the garden under the huge arbor of Rosa fortuniana. Dick Streeper, one of the garden’s founders and a longtime local rose expert, will give a short talk about the history and importance of the rose garden and knowledgeable rosarians will then lead groups of 15 people each on different routes throughout the garden for about 45 minutes. Tour guides will single out certain varieties regarding fragrance, growth habits and other qualities.
DESERT GARDEN
Adjacent to the rose garden is the fantastic Desert Garden, established in 1977. Its peak blooming period is January through March, but its amazing forms remain fascinating even if they aren’t blooming.
Some of the specimens are much older than the 1977 garden inception. They probably date back to 1935 when some of this area was landscaped, and when Kate Sessions was still providing landscaping advice to the park.
At the entry to the Desert Garden, there are some specimens with enormous trunks that are simply unlike any other kind of tree you’ve ever seen. I’m not sure what they are, and that’s the one thing lacking in this garden — labels. I bet I’m not the only one who would like to know the names of these fantastic trees.
Among the plants are some I do know: the gorgeous green-trunked, lacy Palo Verde tree; the scarlet-blooming aloe; many kinds of agave; lots of cacti, including barrel, beavertail and prickly pear; some amazing Dracaena draco — aka dragon trees (whose red sap was likened to dragon’s blood in old times), ocotillo and yuccas.
The sand-and-gravel pathways through the Desert Garden are easy and wide and you’ll also have fine views into Florida Canyon and the trails that connect from here.
And if you know the names of some of those amazing specimens, please let us know too.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
The two adjacent gardens are located on the east side of Park Boulevard, directly across from the Natural History Museum. There is parking near that museum, and a pedestrian footbridge over Park Boulevard from the museum area to the gardens.
For a complete listing of the roses in the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden as well as a map of their locations in the garden, go to www.sdrosesociety.org.
For more information on the rose garden and the desert garden, including a map with their exact locations, go to www.balboapark.org.
