The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden in the New York Botanical Garden

After visiting the beautiful waterlily and lotus pools in the New York Botanical Garden, which you can see in my prior post (click here), my husband and I decided to walk across the garden to see The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, which is open May through October in the garden. The NY Botanical Garden has a tram tour that will carry visitors around the 250 acres of the garden, but as we like to walk for exercise, we decided to stroll through the lovely grounds and woods of the garden instead, to get to our destination.

We passed some interesting examples of bedrock, part of the billion-year-old Bronx borough's "Fordham Gneiss."  Bedrock is what has allowed the borough of Manhattan to build such tall skyscrapers as their foundations can be solidly anchored to support their weight.

We walked over a footbridge over the Bronx River and saw this bucolic scene in the distance.

It was the The Lillian and Amy Goldman Stone Mill, one of New York City's most picturesque pre-Civil War industrial buildings, restored with leadership funding from The Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust and the Amy P. Goldman Foundation.   The Stone Mill was built in 1840 by the Lorillard family and designated a New York City Landmark in 1966 and a National Historic Landmark in 1976. You can watch a Youtube video about the restoration of the mill at this link.

You can enlarge this photo, and all other photos in this post, by right clicking on them once and then again for an even larger image when they reopen. Use your "back" function to return to the post. This placard describes the origins of The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. Originally designed in 1916, completed in 1988, and beautifully renovated in 2006-2007, this stunning garden now displays more than 4,000 rose plants and over 600 varieties, with roses blooming for six months out of the year.

It has been a hot and humid month of August, so I did not expect to see too many roses in bloom during our visit last weekend, but I was pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the garden as we walked down the steps towards it.

The NY Botanical Garden web site calls it: "One of the world’s most environmentally-friendly rose gardens. Overcoming the rose's reputation of being among the most chemically dependent flowers, we celebrate the addition of more than 1,700 new, hardy varieties. Hybridization efforts from all over the world are on display."

It was certainly beautiful and very well maintained!

 

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a wedding ceremony here and then a reception held in the Stone Mill? I am a little sorry I did not know about this wonderful venue until now, but my daughter's wedding plans for next spring are already booked in another pretty NYC place which you will have to stay tuned to see next year.

I enjoyed strolling through the paths in the garden reading all the informational placards that were scattered through out the rose bushes. Remember you can click on each photo to enlarge it.

Beginning in 2009, hundreds of the newest disease resistant roses have been planted in this garden. You can enlarge this placard to read a list of them. If you have not been successful growing roses in the past perhaps these varieties will give you success?

While the roses were not at their peak, I still found many beautiful varieties of roses to photograph as you can see in the collage above. I'm sure when the weather turns slightly cooler there will be a last gorgeous bloom of new buds. Roses are certainly flowers that keep on giving all summer long!

After leaving the rose garden we decided to take a different path back on our walk to the main gate of the garden, and we entered the 50-acre native Forest.  It is the largest remaining expanse of the majestic woodland that once covered almost all of New York City.

With rustic paths that wind beneath magnificent American trees—some more than 200 years old—and past the Bronx River and its rushing waterfall, the forest is another magical place to see.

Walking along Native American hunting trails, under the cool and quiet canopy of the forest trees, was an extraordinary way to end our visit to the New York Botanical Garden, a place we hope to visit and explore many more times in the future!

I'm linking this post to "Outdoor Wednesday" on Susan's blog A Southern Daydreamer and to "Pink Saturday" on Beverly's blog How Sweet the Sound. Please visit these wonderful blogs to see all the wonderful enteries.