Delaware Green Acre: Rose Festival at the Park of Roses

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Rose Festival at the Park of Roses

It was a full weekend for us. My husband drove home with one and a half cubic yards of mulch on Thursday after work. Our intentions were to get this spread in one large bed and a few smaller ones. My husband took Friday off and we mulched, and mulched, and mulched. It was taking a lot longer due to the somewhat wet soil from the previous rains we had last week. I kept weeding and he kept mulching. Then the rains came again on Friday. We dodged one storm earlier, but around five in the afternoon, we saw lightening and decided, in our best interest, that we better stop. That was shortly after we moved a rather large Early Amethyst Beautyberry (Callicarpa dichotoma) from one bed to a new bed. We laughed as both of us tried to get the large root ball onto a plastic mulch bag to no avail. Then we tried moving it onto a large tarp. We were successful, but laughed silly as my husband pulled and tugged as the stubborn Early Amethyst Beautyberry resisted being dug out of its home and then pulled with all our might to its new home. We have one more Beautyberry to move to this new bed, then we will have a group of three. We also planted three Sedum spectabile 'Pink Chablis' Stonecrop . I fell in love with this sedum. It has beautiful cream and green leaves and pink flowers in the fall. We also had on our agenda a full weekend of garden activities that we put on our schedule and really wanted to attend. One of these was the Rose festival in Columbus and the other was a private garden that was open to the public for only the fourth time. It is known as the Schnormeier Gardens and located in Gambier, Ohio. We did manage to get to these great events, but after two days of checking out these gardens, we still had mulch in the truck bed and needed to clear it before the Monday morning work alarm went off, so we worked on getting it unloaded quickly during Sunday evening. We still have the one more Beautyberry to dig and replant in the new bed, but we made progress and had fun during the weekend too.

The Park of Roses is located in Whetstone Park in Columbus, Ohio. This past weekend was the annual Rose Festival. My husband and I are always amazed at the beauty found in this wonderful park and during the festival, it it magnified. The thousands of rose bushes are breath- taking. We always enjoy the herb garden, perennial garden and the many trees throughout the park, but the weekend of the festival, the roses are the star. I always enjoy the many vendors selling a variety of garden art, flowers, rose bushes, and more. It was fun watching people of all ages bending down and sniffing the various roses. Everyone was taking time to "smell the roses.