Chinese Heritage Rose Garden
This garden was funded by a capital campaign in 2010 and 2011, planted in spring and dedicated in July, 2012. The supporters who made the garden possible are listed in the Donor section below. The garden is named for prominent rosarian Jiang Entian. Madame Entian is also honored with a rose garden in her hometown of Taicang, China for her stewardship and study of roses in China, and a lovely velvet-red rose variety bears her name.
Memorial and Tribute Gifts in the Rose Garden
The beauty and uniqueness of the Heritage Rose Garden create a perfect setting in which to memorialize a loved one, honor a friend, or mark a special occasion. The person to whom you pay tribute will be permanently commemorated by an engraved paver or brick set in the garden's pathways, or on the garden's honor plaque.
Donation & Tribute
Contact 707-996-3166 or email info@sonomabg.org to inquire about making a Tribute Gift in the Heritage Rose Garden
Donors who made the garden possible and a delegation of Chinese dignitaries representing some of that country's most prestigious gardens were on hand for the garden's dedication.
From left to right: Sun Jianhua of the Consulate General of China; Zhang Zuoshuang, President of the Chinese Rose Society and Former Director of Beijing Botanical Garden; Steven Hightower, former President of Quarryhill Botanical Garden; Howard Higson, former Head of Horticulture for Quarryhill Botanical Garden; Shen Meilin, Vice-Director, Taicang Agricultural Committee
The Legacy of the China Rose
China roses arrived in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries from southern Yunnan, China and other parts of Southeast Asia, to forever change the course of rose breeding and culture in the western world. The particular traits that enthralled the rose world were repeat-blooming, or remontancy, which was as yet rarely known outside the East, and the stunning beauty of scarlet to crimson colored flowers. Those characteristics were previously unknown in the western world. The four "Stud Chinas", three of which are extant and represented in the center of the Garden's Chinese Heritage Rose Garden, and other Asian introductions combined their genes with those of long-standing European varieties to produce myriad rose classes, now ubiquitous and dominant in rose culture the world over.
Rosa chinensis var. spontanea and Rosa odorata var. gigantea, two wild Chinese species roses which thrive here at the Garden, are the two native species widely believed to have contributed most to those original Stud Roses, and hence to the the China and Tea roses, two groups that have maintained their separate identities despite extensive hybridization.
Descendents of China roses include the Noisettes (China x Musk Rose) and Tea-Noisettes, Bourbons (China x Autumn Damask), Teas (Tea-Scented China x Bourbon/Noisette), Hybrid Chinas (China/Noisette/Bourbon x Once-blooming European varieties), Hybrid Perpetuals (Hybrid China x Portland/Noisette/Bourbon), Hybrid Teas (Hybrid Perpetual x Tea), Polyanthas (China/Tea x Rosa multiflora/Rosa wichurana), and Floribundas (Polyantha x Hybrid Tea).
Clearly, these relatively few Chinese introductions from two hundreds years ago have had a profound and lasting influence on horticulture and the seemingly endless appetite for roses of every size, scent and shape.
