The volunteer season at the park is in full swing. The roses have a spring peak bloom, but return with plenty of flowers in early September. Of course, the weeds never take a break… The herb and perennial gardens are looking lush after the recent rain.

Volunteers are incredibly important to the well-being of the three rose gardens and herb and perennial gardens. The garden staff takes care of watering, mowing, mulching, planting trees and shrubs and spraying when needed. But the day to day work in flower gardens consists of pruning and weeding. Spent flowers are removed (a process known as deadheading) to encourage the plant to bloom again.

Do the math

To give you an idea of the magnitude of the task, consider that there are about 12,000 rose plants in the park. Some are once blooming, (meaning they  don’t need deadheading), but they do require pruning and dead cane removal.

Let’s say that five minutes each is an average time to clean up one rose plant. Five minutes times 12,000 roses equals 60,000 minutes- or about 1,000 hours. Given that each plant may need to be deadheaded 3-4 times per season… well, you get the picture- and that doesn’t include weeding! The herb and perennial gardens are smaller, but the tasks are much the same.

Regular weekly work groups tend all the gardens from April through mid-September. In addition to those volunteers, the Park of Roses Foundation encourages community and business organizations to consider half day volunteer opportunities in the park. Groups can request a weekday date to bring as many as 20 people to work. A lot of mulch can be spread and weeds pulled in 3-4 hours of group effort.

Community groups in the park

Community groups sometimes volunteer in the park.. A volunteer group from the North Area Real Estate Association logged 60 hours of work in a half day’s time. They worked with garden staff to clean up the edges of rose beds and pull weeds near the herb garden. This group gathered several years ago to scrape and paint the historic bandstand in the park.

A group of foreign exchange students has also worked with the garden staff for a few hours. Fifteen students and two advisors learned that pulling weeds can be a gratifying experience. It’s easy to watch the garden cart fill up with plants competing for space with flowers. The students were brought in by the local coordinator of CCI Greenheart, a nonprofit group that connects Americans with international students.