Rose Family Garden
Everything's Coming Up Rosaceae
By Sally Roberts
(with special thanks to Steve Schmelling for historical information about the site)
The Rose Family Garden site at the Santa Fe County Extension campus on Rodeo Road Courtesy Kathy Haq
One of the SFEMG’s demonstration gardens at the Santa Fe County Extension campus on Rodeo Road is getting a much-needed makeover this year. The renamed Rose Family Garden will be headed up by master gardeners Sally Roberts and Elaine Giovando, with advisory support from the Santa Fe Native Plant Project (SNaPP).
The project will bring new life to the space currently occupied by the now-dormant Earth-Kind® Rose Field Trial garden between the upper and lower parking areas. It will feature primarily native plants in the Rosaceae family to demonstrate their variety and use as waterwise choices in Santa Fe. It will also show that there is a way to have an attractive garden without using exotic species, though some of the surviving Earth-Kind® roses may remain. The new plantings will provide resources for native bees, butterflies, other pollinators and beneficial insects.
The plantings may include, for example, Rugosa Rose (Rosa rugosa), Woods Rose (Rosa woodsii), Cliff Rose (Purshia stansburiana), Fern Bush (Chamaebatiaria millefolium) and Apache Plume (Falugia paradoxa). The final selections will depend on the availability of plant species and irrigation water. Since this area is adjacent to the Native Plant Demonstration Gardens established by SNaPP, the intent is to complement these gardens and further beautify the Extension campus for those walking between the Extension Office and the Exhibit Hall.
The Santa Fe County Sustainability Division is installing a small rain garden between the new Rose Family Garden and the show barn as part of a number of 2023 Earth Day activities planned at the County Extension campus on April 22. The Sustainability Division has consulted local permaculturist Reese Baker about using runoff from the tarmac, show barn and exhibit hall to irrigate the rain garden, and the SFEMG is collaborating with Baker on how best to direct runoff from the rain garden to the Rose Family Garden. Other irrigation possibilities are being considered as well.
Master gardeners and interns who work in the Rose Family Garden will be able to fulfill volunteer requirements for operational support (OS) and continuing education (CE) credits; they can also earn public education (PE) credits during special events such as the annual plant sale and the County Fair, for example. The initial setup will create ample opportunities for “how-to” sessions on planting, pruning and harvesting water for gardeners. The SFEMG plans to have signage and offer literature on request for visitors. Funding for this project was made available by the Santa Fe Master Gardeners Association.
About the site:
The national Earth-Kind® Rose Field Trials were established in 2010 by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service at Texas A&M University. The SFEMG embraced the Earth-Kind® project in 2013, and the SFEMG demonstration garden was the first trial site in the arid Southwest. Earth-Kind® is a special designation given to select rose cultivars based on the results of extensive research and field trials; it is awarded to only those roses demonstrating superior pest tolerance combined with outstanding landscape performance. Other varieties of roses were planted alongside the Earth-Kind® roses to serve as comparison plants. This field trial was organized by the late Beverly Adkins, a master gardener who persuaded the county to construct the white iron railings around the site and to dig out the old, poor-quality soil and replace it with an improved soil mix.
Volunteer master gardeners collected data as they maintained the garden within the Trial requirements with the goal of determining if Earth-Kind® environmentally friendly sustainable landscaping principles were applicable to Santa Fe's challenging gardening environment. For the first few years, volunteers working on this project made regular measurements of the size of the plants, the number of blossoms per plant and similar parameters.
Beverly worked with people at Texas A&M to be sure Santa Fe volunteers collected the right data. Another master gardener, Sandy Shaw, acted as the assistant project leader. Sometime around 2017 or 2018 Beverly moved back to the Dallas area. She passed away in Plano, Texas, in February 2022, and Sandy Shaw moved to Abilene, Texas. Former master gardener Dori Jones took over the project, but by then most of the significant measurements had already been made, and the project became more of a maintenance effort. The Earth-Kind® Roses did remarkably well, particularly given the fact that there was almost no pruning, deadheading or watering. They were mulched periodically.
References:
National Earth-Kind® Rose Research Study
This article first appeared in the April 2023 issue of the SFEMG Newsletter.