The Tyler Municipal Rose Garden

The Tyler Municipal Rose Garden is the world’s largest public collection of roses, featuring 38,000 bushes and 600 cultivars. The gardens were constructed during the Depression by the Works Progress Administration but work ceased at the advent of World War II. The Tyler Municipal Rose Garden officially opened in 1952 with roses donated by local rose nurseries with the intent of creating a living catalogue and outdoor laboratory for field rose development and production. The Heritage Rose Garden is located in the southwest corner of the Tyler Municipal Rose Garden. It comprises 1 acre of the 14 acre Municipal Rose Garden. It was begun in 1970s by the Tyler Lions Club as the Sensory Perception Garden for the Blind. The Gertrude Windsor Garden Club adopted this area in 1986 to educate the public about the benefits and beauty of antique roses. The club has the original landscape plans from the 1980’s that were designed to highlight antique roses in a landscape setting along with shrubs, herbs, bulbs and ornamental grasses and continues to develop the garden from these plans. In 1993, the Smith County Master Gardeners became partners with The

These “Texas Tough” plants have suffered terribly in the past 3 years. With each catastrophic event, the Heritage Rose Garden has continued to lose plants. First, Super Winter Storm Uri hit Texas with a vengeance in February of 2021. In Tyler alone, the temperature did not rise above 0 degrees Fahrenheit at night and only climbed to the single digits during the day for 8 consecutive days. The remaining horticulture continued to attempt a recovery when a severe drought and the hottest summer on record (NOAA) occurred in 2023. These extreme conditions continued to stress the remaining plants when another catastrophic weather event occurred on the morning of February 11, 2024, 1-2 inch hail (and some was recorded larger) fell on the greater Tyler area. Damage was extensive throughout the city. Sadly, the Heritage Rose Garden was no exception, losing even more precious plants and leaving the garden desolate.

A Restoration Grant would be used to replace heritage plants such as camellias, antique roses and azaleas. A $10,000 grant would supply approximately 30 heritage and native azaleas, 10 large heritage camellias and 65 heritage and antique roses needed to bring the garden back to its original beauty.