Fiery pinks and mellow peaches. Luscious reds and virgin whites. With its vibrant flowers, Eugene’s Owen Rose Garden greets the eyes with a splash of color. The garden is located on Jefferson Street, along the Willamette River, and offers a tranquil space away from the bustle of urban life.
George E. Owen, a local lumberman and philanthropist, donated the original two acres of the garden to Eugene in 1950, selling the acres for $10 each. Owen said he wanted “a place where the people of Eugene could get away from daily stresses and smell the roses.” The Eugene Rose Society then donated 750 rose bushes to start the garden.
The garden now covers about nine acres and has more than 4,500 shrubs of some 400 varieties of roses, according to the garden’s Web site. Head gardener Dee Grissell said there are 52 different classes of roses, adding that the garden includes at least 47 of these classes. He said the garden has both old-style and modern varieties, as well as some rarer types.
“We have some roses that nobody has or are very rare,” he said.
Taking care of the flowers is labor-intensive, Grissell said. The garden has three gardeners constantly tending to the plants as they bloom from buds into a flourish of color.
“Each plant has its own individual character so you learn by trial and error from year to year (what each one needs),” he said.
Even in the winter, when the flowers are dormant, the gardeners must continue pruning them. In the spring, Grissell said they start cleaning, fertilizing and spraying the plants for fungus.
“We try to minimize our pesticide usage,” he said. “We use no herbicides, we use no insecticides.”
He said most of the roses have three “flushes of bloom” during the warm months, but some of the older varieties bloom only once. He added that if temperatures do not fall too quickly in the upcoming months, the garden should still have a lot of color until Thanksgiving.
Some of the roses show clear differences, while in others the distinctions are very subtle, perhaps only noticeable to keen gardeners or florists, or an experienced Romeo. They have names like Sunflare, Heatwave, Charisma and Roman Holiday. There are even some called Jiminy Cricket and Impatient.

Grissell said one of his favorites is the Pilar Landecho, a salmon-colored rose. The garden has only one shrub of its kind.
“People come from all over the world to see different gardens,” Grissell said. “Locals come for the tranquility, the scents and smells.”
He added that in a year, the garden can have more than 150,000 visitors, and the flow of people is constant.
“Yesterday I had people from England, from Miami, Fla., and from Washington, D.C.,” he said.
George Blonde, who is visiting from California, came to the garden with his family.
“I like flowers,” he said as he wandered, taking pictures of the roses. “And it’s kind of peaceful.”
The garden also features a new gazebo, which was completed last June with the help of the Eugene Delta Rotary. The Rotarians adopted the garden as a community service project in 1999, and raised more than more than $25,000 for the gazebo’s creation, according to landscape architect John Weber. Weber, who updated the garden’s master plan in 1997, said these funds were matched by the city of Eugene’s general funds; local businesses also made donations. He said more pathways, waterways and sculptures are planned to spruce up the park. The gazebo is becoming a popular site for weddings.
The garden also includes landmarks that are part of Eugene’s history. Standing like a sentinel in one corner of the garden is a gnarled black cherry tree with moss-covered branches spread out like a spider’s legs. The Black Tartarian cherry tree, which is 156 years old, is the oldest in Oregon and probably the oldest in the country, Grissell said.
The rose garden stands out nationally too — it has received the American Rose Society Maintenance award for the past seven years, Grissell said. Most people always have wonderful things to say, he added, and that makes the toil of maintaining the garden worthwhile.