Welcome!
Hello
and welcome to the Friends of the San Jose Rose
Garden!
Founded by Terry Reilly and Beverly Rose Hopper, Friends of the San Jose Rose Garden "adopted' the garden in late 2007 under the Adopt-A-Park and the City of San Jose's Public/Private Partnership Program.
Due to severe cutbacks to the city's park maintenance budgets over the years, staffing levels at this garden were severely cut. As a result, this garden was placed on probation (see the letters here 2005,2007, 2008) by the All America Rose Selections (AARS), the governing board of public display rose gardens. It was our goal to restore the AARS Accreditation.
We knew the Rose Garden, established in 1932, held a special place in the hearts of many people throughout the Bay Area. If we provided the opportunity and organization, many would come out to revive this Grande Dame nestled in the heart of the Silicon Valley. We developed an aggressive campaign of recruiting volunteers, engaging the media, and utilizing a innovative Web 2.0 presence. We worked with the City, who partnered with us from the very start to make this a successful venture.
To understand the genesis of this organization, it is best to review the news articles in their chronological order on the News page, and to check on the photos and videos HERE.
After over 4000+ volunteer hours, and the awesome support of the Gardener Lance Loveday and the San Jose Parks Department, the All-America Rose Selections' (AARS) reinstated the National Accreditation on December 3rd, 2008.
In fact, the AARS felt the program developed by the Friends of the San Jose Rose Garden could inspire other gardens throughout the United States, and they wrote a Case Study on our little adventure. The AARS sent this Case Study to the 150+ public gardens throughout the United States. The AARS felt the leadership of the public rose gardens could use this case study as a roadmap on how to successfully engage the public and municipality to revive their public rose gardens.
We have already been contacted from gardens throughout the U.S. concerning the program developed here for the garden in San Jose.
On May 2nd, with the Mayor of San Jose, Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio, President of the AARS and world famous hybridzer Tom Carruth, attended a ceremony to celebrate the accomplishments at the Garden and to make a special announcement. The San Jose Municipal Rose Garden became the newest AARS Test Garden, joining 22 others in the United States.
The success of this program could not have been accomplished without the support of the many volunteer throughout the Bay Area and the hard working men and women of the Parks Department of San Jose.
In closing this Garden has a long history, and we are collecting a lot of old articles. For a history of its beginning, you can go to this PAGE. In the future, we'd like to provide a window into the early history of the garden, but at the moment, we are tending to the immediate needs of the garden.