This is a plea to save and honor our historic and pioneer past by invigorating it’s memories for each generation thru honoring the pioneer era ROSES brought in from our old long abandoned homesteads, churches and cemeteries of our early California settlements.
Through the glorious ROSE, our graves, and monuments will not simply vanish into the dust, but will be refreshed In the minds and hearts of each generation.
The ROSES in our Heritage Rose Cemetery of Sacramento allow myself and each generation to celebrate our connection to history in a living way that helps us remember that our past, present and future are always intertwined.
Save our past and present by properly saving our Cemetery Roses
Eve Ewing
Paul Oliva, U.S. Diplomat - Foreign Commercial Service
about 4 years ago
In reviewing the Preservation Assessment and 5-Year Preservation Plan, there is much on which all stakeholders can agree. Management of the cemetery should preserve its historic features. Garden aspects should complement the historic character. An aesthetic vision of the cemetery is needed. Yet there is a difference between a 1957 vision of the cemetery which discouraged visitors and a 1860 vision that welcomes them in and engages them in our history. Moreover, the City has generally been unable or unwilling to fund a conservator or historic landscape architect or the other resources recommended in the plan. In fact the report notes that most key preservation, rehabilitation, and restoration activities were funded by the Old City Cemetery Committee through the events and activities that had both a financial and public benefit for the City. The Commission must advance the most publicly engaging and financially sustainable plan. The proposed plan falls short.
This is a disturbing insight into the City’s attitude towards volunteers who donated so much time and energy to the Cemetery. As a volunteer over almost three years, when I had little direct contact with staff. Staff never indicated I was doing anything improper or outside City guidelines. Other, more seasoned volunteers made sure I was aware of requirements that markers be clear of mulch and writing remain visible. I certainly did that, as did all the other volunteers I observed. I'm sorry to see the radically different look of the Cemetery today. During the time I was there, I saw people visit because they were interested in the historical nature of the place. I saw many more-clearly local-who came because it was such a beautiful, peaceful place to walk. Several stopped to thank me for my efforts. It's sad that Sacramento government doesn't feel the same about us volunteers-and that the Cemetery is be changed in a way that will make it much less inviting to its citizens.
As a rosarian & consultant to 10 public & private heritage rose gardens in Southern California, I have travelled to Sacramento each Spring for the Open Garden Event & Sale. The roses in the collection are living antiques & are uniquely Californian. Most of these roses no longer exist in the places they were collected nor are they commercially available.
It has been an invaluable source of roses that would have been grown in California before 1850, the criteria for The Old Town Rose Garden I curate in San Diego. I have spent 1000s of dollars at the rose sales in just the past 3 years & that doesn’t count the additional 1000s spent at local hotels & businesses. I’m not alone. Many come from around the world to visit the Historic Rose Garden. The destruction of it is a significant cultural & economic loss to the City of Sacramento.
Becky C Yianilos
Convenor, Heritage Rose Society of San Diego
Curator, Old Town Heritage Rose Garden, San Diego
Board Member, California Coastal Rose Society
My name is Nancy Laran and I was a volunteer at the cemetery for more then ten years. Five of those years I worked in the rose garden as well as I adopted the May Woolley plot. Note, when I took over May’s plot..it was over grown and weeds everywhere. This is a plot that should be beautiful for the school children visiting. In the rose garden I took care of the Swinerton plot. It was my number one priority to keep the inscription clear I left the cemetery two years ago as a volunteer because the of the unfair treatment by city staff towards volunteers. It breaks my heart lose a beautiful place of history to visit. It is a mystery to me why gardens cannot be in the cemetery and with help from volunteers.
Staff presentation includes false or misleading statements which leads to inappropriate conclusions about the Historic Rose Garden. It was planned by City Historian Jim Henley and laid out by Cemetery Manager, Darrell Martineau who directed initial plantings. City staff installed & documented the irrigation system. Roses in HRG are old and antique roses, most planted by California pioneers on historic sites, thus ‘historic’. A list of rare roses was given to city staff in 2019 (Gary Hyden & Andrew McVicar). Current approved Planting Guidelines are 2019 not the 2016 version. As no volunteers were permitted to work in the last 8 months, weeds and mulch have covered many plots throughout the cemetery. Brick plot surrounds are primarily those repaired/replaced beginning in the 1980’s. It is appalling the city would destroy historic artifacts - roses - in this way. The result will be no volunteers, few visitors and increased vandalism.
I have been a volunteer history tour guide at the Historic City Cemetery since 1993. The cemetery has flourished due to the hard work of countless dedicated volunteers, not due to any action by the City. The City's 2020 Preservation Assessment and 5-Year Plan is filled with errors and discredits all the work done by volunteers. It is an attempt to destroy the credibility of those who truly love the cemetery and have devoted their time and energy to create a jewel in the middle of the city. I cannot understand why the City of Sacramento is making this attempt to ruin an internationally-recognized and beloved cemetery. I urge the Preservation Commission to dismiss this error-ridden Assessment outright, and to include the cemetery's volunteers as full partners in the cemetery's ongoing care and maintenance. We love the Historic City Cemetery. The City clearly doesn't.
For the last 4 years, we have tended plots suggested to us by staff. The beauty of plants honors those interred. We respect monuments while gardening. The staff report notes that “Guidelines for Trimming, Pruning, and Planting in the Historic Old City Cemetery” were adopted on February 19, 2016. This is the first time that we have seen this document. By reviewing the staff report, we also learned of the “Preservation Assessment and 5-Year Preservation Plan,” which was provided to the city on January 9, 2020 but not made public until last month. Involvement of volunteers in the assessment is not evident. The most helpful recommendation is the least discussed one, on page 43: More than any other method, education and training for staff and volunteers will help with preservation efforts. We urge that the assessment be withdrawn and that meaningful engagement with stakeholders be undertaken to revise the document so that it articulates a common vision and path for achieving it.
We were absolutely horrified at this renewed effort to interfere , indeed destroy, a labor of love. The Sacramento Cemetery Garden is the handiwork of earnest rose loving amateurs and is known the world over. Our sincere request from far away India that this garden which is known for its heritage of peace and beauty is allowed to remain unaltered. If at all any changes are required , these should be compatible with the best rose growing practices. There should also be a finality to design changes which seem to hang like a Damocles Sword over the garden. We are well aware of the rose growing practices and the rose gardens in the U.S.. There is no doubt that Sacramento is something special .
Viru and Girija Viraraghavan
Great Rosarians of the World Award recipients from Huntington Gardens, 2006
Internationally known rose breeders
I was very distressed to see what has happened to the roses in the cemetery. They made it such a beautiful and peaceful place to visit. I have also read some distressing things about the plans for these roses in the future of the cemetery. Apparently Tom Liggett has said that only four of these roses are historically significant. And yet, when the cemetery started the rose garden, he and Ed Wilkinson, both involved at that time with planning the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, provided more than a dozen of these plants. He must have believed they had historical significance then.
Jill Perry
Curator, San Jose Heritage Rose Garden
Board Member, Heritage Roses Group
President, South Bay Heritage Rose Group
I find the proposed plan for the city cemetery to be a plan for destruction not preservation. We've heard from a preservationist for the monuments. What about hearing from a preservationist for the rose garden which is a repository for historically significant roses? I was doing some research trying to understand this issue and I realized that the rose garden is listed as a contributor in the cemetery's listing in the National Register of Historic Places and should be protected on the same basis as the rest of the historic landscape. Which means that the damage that is intentionally being done to the roses should be not allowed. Could it be a crime? It should be. The butchery that I've seen in the pruning is not in the best interest of the roses. There should be the ability to negotiate the needs of all parts of the cemetery. Instead the city has taken the attitude that they can destroy at their whim. And destroy a jewel that had been lovingly created. Shame!
My wife and I live in Livermore and started volunteering at the cemetery's historic rose garden in 2012. We were very active, driving the 90 miles from Livermore many, many times from 2012-2016. However, our volunteering at the cemetery declined to just a handful of times from 2017-2019 as the City (of Sacramento) for some reason started clamping down on the volunteers, discouraging them, treating them as slaves. Why, I still don't understand. Why, has never been explained.
We volunteer at public rose gardens in Livermore and Dublin and receive thanks from those cities.
Things could have been so different if the City had been open and honest about what they thought were issues at the cemetery. The City could have asked for the opinions of the volunteers. But, the City did not. Instead, the way the City has treated the volunteers has been absolutely shameful and this September 16 Preservation Commission Report continues doing the same.
The plan under consideration is based on assumptions about what was intended by the original developers of the cemetery in the 19th century. Actually park or garden cemeteries were very popular at that time, and I do not believe the people buried in this one would be offended if they could see what the volunteers had made of the area . The proposed plan will destroy a unique area sure to draw visitors and replace it with just one more old, dusty cemetery to be ignored and vandalized. Regarding the pruning and other gardening practices proposed, my husband, who was a member of the American Rose Society for many years as well as president of our local society, says he can’t imagine what they are trying to do except kill the plants. I do not live in Sacramento and I do not even know the names of the people involved in the controversy. My opinions are those of an outsider who hates to see beauty destroyed in the name of “authenticity.”
Having read the Report, I am concerned that its accusation of “no or little regard for preservation best practices” also applies to those responsible for writing the report. In other words, without knowing and understanding rose culture and the requirements that differ for roses of different classes, it appears that the roses have all been treated (cut and pruned) alike. Such actions can be a set-back, even lethal, to certain roses.
I absolutely disagree with the report that “only about four of the roses in the Cemetery have any historical value.” It shows a profound ignorance of roses.
As the author of the book Rainbow: A History of the Rose in California, I based my title on the striped Tea rose ‘Rainbow’, an original California rose from 1889. Two roses of this variety were discovered at separate historic sites in Calaveras County and have been preserved in this old Historic Cemetery. It would be a great horticultural loss if this rose were removed or damaged beyond saving.
Preserving the hardscape of the cemetery at the expense of plants is short sighted, as it neglects the cultural practices associated with cemeteries of that era. Although these roses are not original to the cemetery, the fact that many of these specimens were collected from California cemeteries shows the authenticity of the rose collection as an example of the historic practice of using plants to honor the dead. When I am in Paris I spend many hours wandering through historical cemeteries there -- some of the most carefully curated and preserved cemeteries in the world. My favorite is the cemetery of Montmartre, where many of the graves are decorated with live plants – both historic and newly-planted. Plants in the cemetery draw people to the place, and the integrity of the stones should be balanced against the unique atmosphere of a living garden cemetery -- an historical phenomenon that is, unfortunately, rare in the USA.
I've volunteered over the past 10 years at the cemetery from the "Adopt-a-Plot" program to fundraising tours. Without the OCCC, the cemetery would be nothing but weeds and neglect. The fact that the city has anything to work with at all, is thanks to volunteers who put money, time and love into these plots. I uncovered 2 stone placards and a foot stone in one plot. Volunteer masons fixed the crumbling mess of a plot in front of that one. I spent my own money and put my own hours into giving these plots the respect they deserve. To say this place holds a special place is an understatement. Without it, I literally would not have met my husband (durning one of the tours) and have had my beautiful son because of that. I've spent many hours just sitting there, in the serene moments that it had to give me. This is just my view, I know many others feel the same. Can we not at least meet in the middle to find out the best way to make the cemetery more bearutiful, yet support it's history?
My mother, Barbara Oliva, prior curator and volunteer for over 20 years for the Historic City Cemetery Rose garden, was also a minister's daughter. As such, she would NEVER desecrate any grave as had recently been suggested in a report. That accusation is an insult to her memory and the love and dedication she gave as curator of that lovely garden which is now being threatened with annihilation. Ironically, in October of 2012, the city honored my mom with a resolution thanking her for all her work in the very cemetery garden she and the other volunteers have allegedly now desecrated. This garden was literally a world class horticultural attraction. Shame on the City of Sacramento for the plan to destroy such a beautiful asset and the deplorable treatment given to the garden volunteers. I sincerely think you need to rethink your position.
I am the owner of Paul Zimmerman Roses LLC, have been the exclusive Consulting Rosarian to Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC for the past decade, consulted with the New York Botanical Garden on their rose garden, I’m an Independent Consultant to Jackson & Perkins and author of the book ‘Everyday Roses’ published by Taunton Press. I saw photos of the recent “pruning” of the rose garden. In all honesty it makes no sense horticulturally to cut back that hard - particularly in the heat of summer. I personally feel this will harm the plants in the long run, not to mention the aesthetic of the space. I know there is a balancing act in public spaces between visitors and plants, but I would never recommend this course of action. Roses are rejuvenated by the occasional removal of an old cane as part of their normal care over the years. This garden is well known all over the world and is a jewel in Sacramento. As a professional I ask you re-consider this tactic.
I have watched this garden grow for many years. It had become a true heritage rose garden. The volunteers worked to perfection, always watchful of respect for those interned over the area. Many rosarians from all over the world came to see it and arranged tours to visit .Sacramento. The City had a place of beauty and peace for the tired and weary. Now, I see an ugly bare concrete cemetery. The person pruning these Heritage roses, may have known something before, but has lost the plot. This Council has lost the respect of any lover of rare, heritage roses and from those who see the farce you have propagated. Shame on you.
Please. Please. Leave the cemetary alone.
Please stop screwing around with Sacramento's history leave it alone.
Have a heart and leave the Souls alone.
Thank you.
Sacramento my Home
This is a plea to save and honor our historic and pioneer past by invigorating it’s memories for each generation thru honoring the pioneer era ROSES brought in from our old long abandoned homesteads, churches and cemeteries of our early California settlements.
Through the glorious ROSE, our graves, and monuments will not simply vanish into the dust, but will be refreshed In the minds and hearts of each generation.
The ROSES in our Heritage Rose Cemetery of Sacramento allow myself and each generation to celebrate our connection to history in a living way that helps us remember that our past, present and future are always intertwined.
Save our past and present by properly saving our Cemetery Roses
Eve Ewing
In reviewing the Preservation Assessment and 5-Year Preservation Plan, there is much on which all stakeholders can agree. Management of the cemetery should preserve its historic features. Garden aspects should complement the historic character. An aesthetic vision of the cemetery is needed. Yet there is a difference between a 1957 vision of the cemetery which discouraged visitors and a 1860 vision that welcomes them in and engages them in our history. Moreover, the City has generally been unable or unwilling to fund a conservator or historic landscape architect or the other resources recommended in the plan. In fact the report notes that most key preservation, rehabilitation, and restoration activities were funded by the Old City Cemetery Committee through the events and activities that had both a financial and public benefit for the City. The Commission must advance the most publicly engaging and financially sustainable plan. The proposed plan falls short.
This is a disturbing insight into the City’s attitude towards volunteers who donated so much time and energy to the Cemetery. As a volunteer over almost three years, when I had little direct contact with staff. Staff never indicated I was doing anything improper or outside City guidelines. Other, more seasoned volunteers made sure I was aware of requirements that markers be clear of mulch and writing remain visible. I certainly did that, as did all the other volunteers I observed. I'm sorry to see the radically different look of the Cemetery today. During the time I was there, I saw people visit because they were interested in the historical nature of the place. I saw many more-clearly local-who came because it was such a beautiful, peaceful place to walk. Several stopped to thank me for my efforts. It's sad that Sacramento government doesn't feel the same about us volunteers-and that the Cemetery is be changed in a way that will make it much less inviting to its citizens.
As a rosarian & consultant to 10 public & private heritage rose gardens in Southern California, I have travelled to Sacramento each Spring for the Open Garden Event & Sale. The roses in the collection are living antiques & are uniquely Californian. Most of these roses no longer exist in the places they were collected nor are they commercially available.
It has been an invaluable source of roses that would have been grown in California before 1850, the criteria for The Old Town Rose Garden I curate in San Diego. I have spent 1000s of dollars at the rose sales in just the past 3 years & that doesn’t count the additional 1000s spent at local hotels & businesses. I’m not alone. Many come from around the world to visit the Historic Rose Garden. The destruction of it is a significant cultural & economic loss to the City of Sacramento.
Becky C Yianilos
Convenor, Heritage Rose Society of San Diego
Curator, Old Town Heritage Rose Garden, San Diego
Board Member, California Coastal Rose Society
My name is Nancy Laran and I was a volunteer at the cemetery for more then ten years. Five of those years I worked in the rose garden as well as I adopted the May Woolley plot. Note, when I took over May’s plot..it was over grown and weeds everywhere. This is a plot that should be beautiful for the school children visiting. In the rose garden I took care of the Swinerton plot. It was my number one priority to keep the inscription clear I left the cemetery two years ago as a volunteer because the of the unfair treatment by city staff towards volunteers. It breaks my heart lose a beautiful place of history to visit. It is a mystery to me why gardens cannot be in the cemetery and with help from volunteers.
Staff presentation includes false or misleading statements which leads to inappropriate conclusions about the Historic Rose Garden. It was planned by City Historian Jim Henley and laid out by Cemetery Manager, Darrell Martineau who directed initial plantings. City staff installed & documented the irrigation system. Roses in HRG are old and antique roses, most planted by California pioneers on historic sites, thus ‘historic’. A list of rare roses was given to city staff in 2019 (Gary Hyden & Andrew McVicar). Current approved Planting Guidelines are 2019 not the 2016 version. As no volunteers were permitted to work in the last 8 months, weeds and mulch have covered many plots throughout the cemetery. Brick plot surrounds are primarily those repaired/replaced beginning in the 1980’s. It is appalling the city would destroy historic artifacts - roses - in this way. The result will be no volunteers, few visitors and increased vandalism.
I have been a volunteer history tour guide at the Historic City Cemetery since 1993. The cemetery has flourished due to the hard work of countless dedicated volunteers, not due to any action by the City. The City's 2020 Preservation Assessment and 5-Year Plan is filled with errors and discredits all the work done by volunteers. It is an attempt to destroy the credibility of those who truly love the cemetery and have devoted their time and energy to create a jewel in the middle of the city. I cannot understand why the City of Sacramento is making this attempt to ruin an internationally-recognized and beloved cemetery. I urge the Preservation Commission to dismiss this error-ridden Assessment outright, and to include the cemetery's volunteers as full partners in the cemetery's ongoing care and maintenance. We love the Historic City Cemetery. The City clearly doesn't.
For the last 4 years, we have tended plots suggested to us by staff. The beauty of plants honors those interred. We respect monuments while gardening. The staff report notes that “Guidelines for Trimming, Pruning, and Planting in the Historic Old City Cemetery” were adopted on February 19, 2016. This is the first time that we have seen this document. By reviewing the staff report, we also learned of the “Preservation Assessment and 5-Year Preservation Plan,” which was provided to the city on January 9, 2020 but not made public until last month. Involvement of volunteers in the assessment is not evident. The most helpful recommendation is the least discussed one, on page 43: More than any other method, education and training for staff and volunteers will help with preservation efforts. We urge that the assessment be withdrawn and that meaningful engagement with stakeholders be undertaken to revise the document so that it articulates a common vision and path for achieving it.
We were absolutely horrified at this renewed effort to interfere , indeed destroy, a labor of love. The Sacramento Cemetery Garden is the handiwork of earnest rose loving amateurs and is known the world over. Our sincere request from far away India that this garden which is known for its heritage of peace and beauty is allowed to remain unaltered. If at all any changes are required , these should be compatible with the best rose growing practices. There should also be a finality to design changes which seem to hang like a Damocles Sword over the garden. We are well aware of the rose growing practices and the rose gardens in the U.S.. There is no doubt that Sacramento is something special .
Viru and Girija Viraraghavan
Great Rosarians of the World Award recipients from Huntington Gardens, 2006
Internationally known rose breeders
I was very distressed to see what has happened to the roses in the cemetery. They made it such a beautiful and peaceful place to visit. I have also read some distressing things about the plans for these roses in the future of the cemetery. Apparently Tom Liggett has said that only four of these roses are historically significant. And yet, when the cemetery started the rose garden, he and Ed Wilkinson, both involved at that time with planning the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, provided more than a dozen of these plants. He must have believed they had historical significance then.
Jill Perry
Curator, San Jose Heritage Rose Garden
Board Member, Heritage Roses Group
President, South Bay Heritage Rose Group
I find the proposed plan for the city cemetery to be a plan for destruction not preservation. We've heard from a preservationist for the monuments. What about hearing from a preservationist for the rose garden which is a repository for historically significant roses? I was doing some research trying to understand this issue and I realized that the rose garden is listed as a contributor in the cemetery's listing in the National Register of Historic Places and should be protected on the same basis as the rest of the historic landscape. Which means that the damage that is intentionally being done to the roses should be not allowed. Could it be a crime? It should be. The butchery that I've seen in the pruning is not in the best interest of the roses. There should be the ability to negotiate the needs of all parts of the cemetery. Instead the city has taken the attitude that they can destroy at their whim. And destroy a jewel that had been lovingly created. Shame!
My wife and I live in Livermore and started volunteering at the cemetery's historic rose garden in 2012. We were very active, driving the 90 miles from Livermore many, many times from 2012-2016. However, our volunteering at the cemetery declined to just a handful of times from 2017-2019 as the City (of Sacramento) for some reason started clamping down on the volunteers, discouraging them, treating them as slaves. Why, I still don't understand. Why, has never been explained.
We volunteer at public rose gardens in Livermore and Dublin and receive thanks from those cities.
Things could have been so different if the City had been open and honest about what they thought were issues at the cemetery. The City could have asked for the opinions of the volunteers. But, the City did not. Instead, the way the City has treated the volunteers has been absolutely shameful and this September 16 Preservation Commission Report continues doing the same.
The plan under consideration is based on assumptions about what was intended by the original developers of the cemetery in the 19th century. Actually park or garden cemeteries were very popular at that time, and I do not believe the people buried in this one would be offended if they could see what the volunteers had made of the area . The proposed plan will destroy a unique area sure to draw visitors and replace it with just one more old, dusty cemetery to be ignored and vandalized. Regarding the pruning and other gardening practices proposed, my husband, who was a member of the American Rose Society for many years as well as president of our local society, says he can’t imagine what they are trying to do except kill the plants. I do not live in Sacramento and I do not even know the names of the people involved in the controversy. My opinions are those of an outsider who hates to see beauty destroyed in the name of “authenticity.”
Having read the Report, I am concerned that its accusation of “no or little regard for preservation best practices” also applies to those responsible for writing the report. In other words, without knowing and understanding rose culture and the requirements that differ for roses of different classes, it appears that the roses have all been treated (cut and pruned) alike. Such actions can be a set-back, even lethal, to certain roses.
I absolutely disagree with the report that “only about four of the roses in the Cemetery have any historical value.” It shows a profound ignorance of roses.
As the author of the book Rainbow: A History of the Rose in California, I based my title on the striped Tea rose ‘Rainbow’, an original California rose from 1889. Two roses of this variety were discovered at separate historic sites in Calaveras County and have been preserved in this old Historic Cemetery. It would be a great horticultural loss if this rose were removed or damaged beyond saving.
Preserving the hardscape of the cemetery at the expense of plants is short sighted, as it neglects the cultural practices associated with cemeteries of that era. Although these roses are not original to the cemetery, the fact that many of these specimens were collected from California cemeteries shows the authenticity of the rose collection as an example of the historic practice of using plants to honor the dead. When I am in Paris I spend many hours wandering through historical cemeteries there -- some of the most carefully curated and preserved cemeteries in the world. My favorite is the cemetery of Montmartre, where many of the graves are decorated with live plants – both historic and newly-planted. Plants in the cemetery draw people to the place, and the integrity of the stones should be balanced against the unique atmosphere of a living garden cemetery -- an historical phenomenon that is, unfortunately, rare in the USA.
I've volunteered over the past 10 years at the cemetery from the "Adopt-a-Plot" program to fundraising tours. Without the OCCC, the cemetery would be nothing but weeds and neglect. The fact that the city has anything to work with at all, is thanks to volunteers who put money, time and love into these plots. I uncovered 2 stone placards and a foot stone in one plot. Volunteer masons fixed the crumbling mess of a plot in front of that one. I spent my own money and put my own hours into giving these plots the respect they deserve. To say this place holds a special place is an understatement. Without it, I literally would not have met my husband (durning one of the tours) and have had my beautiful son because of that. I've spent many hours just sitting there, in the serene moments that it had to give me. This is just my view, I know many others feel the same. Can we not at least meet in the middle to find out the best way to make the cemetery more bearutiful, yet support it's history?
My mother, Barbara Oliva, prior curator and volunteer for over 20 years for the Historic City Cemetery Rose garden, was also a minister's daughter. As such, she would NEVER desecrate any grave as had recently been suggested in a report. That accusation is an insult to her memory and the love and dedication she gave as curator of that lovely garden which is now being threatened with annihilation. Ironically, in October of 2012, the city honored my mom with a resolution thanking her for all her work in the very cemetery garden she and the other volunteers have allegedly now desecrated. This garden was literally a world class horticultural attraction. Shame on the City of Sacramento for the plan to destroy such a beautiful asset and the deplorable treatment given to the garden volunteers. I sincerely think you need to rethink your position.
I am the owner of Paul Zimmerman Roses LLC, have been the exclusive Consulting Rosarian to Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC for the past decade, consulted with the New York Botanical Garden on their rose garden, I’m an Independent Consultant to Jackson & Perkins and author of the book ‘Everyday Roses’ published by Taunton Press. I saw photos of the recent “pruning” of the rose garden. In all honesty it makes no sense horticulturally to cut back that hard - particularly in the heat of summer. I personally feel this will harm the plants in the long run, not to mention the aesthetic of the space. I know there is a balancing act in public spaces between visitors and plants, but I would never recommend this course of action. Roses are rejuvenated by the occasional removal of an old cane as part of their normal care over the years. This garden is well known all over the world and is a jewel in Sacramento. As a professional I ask you re-consider this tactic.
I have watched this garden grow for many years. It had become a true heritage rose garden. The volunteers worked to perfection, always watchful of respect for those interned over the area. Many rosarians from all over the world came to see it and arranged tours to visit .Sacramento. The City had a place of beauty and peace for the tired and weary. Now, I see an ugly bare concrete cemetery. The person pruning these Heritage roses, may have known something before, but has lost the plot. This Council has lost the respect of any lover of rare, heritage roses and from those who see the farce you have propagated. Shame on you.
Please. Please. Leave the cemetary alone.
Please stop screwing around with Sacramento's history leave it alone.
Have a heart and leave the Souls alone.
Thank you.
Sacramento my Home