The City of Gardens Invites You to the Hatley Park Rose Garden

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Are you aware that a rare Canadian rose garden thrives at Hatley Park? This classic garden with its egg-shaped beds came to life at the beginning of the modern rose era. June was typically the blooming season during Edwardian times, but over the last 60 years roses have begun to bloom all summer long.

Designed in the Edwardian era, its structure reflects the elegance of that age, while its plants run a gamut from medieval to modern.

Almost a century ago, one of its designers explained how to find it: strolling from the Italian Garden adjacent to the Castle, “the steps leading to the Croquet Court also lead to the path to the Tennis Court and beyond to the Rose Garden…This path skirts a little pond and stream which, with the overhanging trees and flower-carpeted banks, form a particularly pleasing feature.” Franklin Brett, who partnered with George D. Hall in a Boston landscaping firm which completed several early British Columbia gardens, penned these directions for the readers of The  American Architect in 1916.

Today, the walled Rose Garden can be reached by the same route, with the path past the pond now skirting the patio behind the Royal Roads University library. On a warm day the scent of the garden can be caught long before it’s seen.

Entering through an unassuming deer gate just past the tennis court and taking a few steps inside, you’ll be transfixed: roses dangle from above, reach sideways from posts, and rise up from the ground ahead. Large ones, small ones; red, yellow, pink-and-white striped ones… Ramblers, pillars, shrubs… Old ones, new ones: Albas, Damasks, Gallicas and modern David Austins…Every class of rose known to humankind seems to flourish here.

Why, you might wonder, is a beautiful rose bower concealed so far from its castle? The answer lies in its owners’ wish to mirror British upper-class life during the period when the garden was created. A generation earlier, Victorian rose gardens had held many plants which offered excellent cutting flowers for manor rooms but were ungainly in appearance, so they were located well beyond tightly controlled beds of annuals and other features generally displayed for the interest of guests. The Edwardian gentry who followed in the early years of the 20th Century adored embellishment and decorated their inherited rose recesses with romantic overhanging swags, billowing sprays trained on pergolas and pillars, and sweeping banks of ramblers.

James and Laura Dunsmuir wanted their Hatley property to have the appearance of inherited English grounds which had evolved naturally through the epochs, so its landscape held elements typical of such estates in Edwardian times: a formal terrace adjacent to a mansion, perennial borders, and a distant domain brimming with picturesque, popular contemporary roses.

Today, Hatley Park’s rose garden is managed by a small team of professional gardeners and contains a broader range of roses than when it was first created. The 1913 planting plan of Brett and Hall housed in the University Archives reveals an emphasis on the Hybrid Perpetual, Hybrid Tea and Wichuraiana Ramblers then in vogue. While the structured formality of Edwardian gardens could be timeless in quality, many of their typical roses were not favoured with longevity -- for instance, a large number of the Hybrid Perpetuals in the Hatley Park design do not exist in modern gardens. As well as being awkward in appearance, they were susceptible to disease, and their colour range was limited: a visitor walking the paths of the original Hatley Park garden would have seen clouds of maroon, dark red, pink and white flowers emanating from its Hybrid Perpetuals, with an occasional touch of yellow or orange provided by the other classes. In addition, in spite of their name (Perpetuals) they were not truly “remontant” – they bloomed and rebloomed mainly in June and July, whereas many other roses continue into the fall season.

When they renovated the Hatley Park Rose Garden in 1997, Dave Rutherford (Manager of the Gardens and Grounds) and Greg Higgs (our Rose Garden Specialist) realized that it would be impossible to fully return to the 1913 design. Although they retained its egg-shaped outline with a main path running parallel to a defining outer wall, they introduced a variety of different plants. A central lawn which had replaced rose plantings at some point in the past was now removed, healthy soil was dug into the ground and new beds were created by a team of gardeners. Brentwood Bay Nurseries – a local Victoria based company -- donated over two hundred plants, including some David Austins, bred in England in recent decades to combine the strengths and scents of hardy old roses with the remontant nature of modern hybrids.

Along the garden’s perimeter are heritage roses from antiquity to more recent centuries, including such notables as Rosa Gallica Officianalis, Chloris and York and Lancaster (the latter dating from approximately 1550). One rose from the Brett and Hall planting design, along with others maintained through the replanting of cuttings taken from it, has survived from the start – it’s an American Pillar, a lovely rambler developed in 1902. Four American Pillars are now located on the ground precisely where they appear in the plans, two of them beside a gate into the greenhouse area, and two near an exit to the Japanese Garden. Also reflected both on the design and in the garden itself are Gruss an Teplitz and La France, although neither are original plants.

What does the Rose Garden’s future hold? It might return a little more to its Edwardian roots, as Higgs would like to re-introduce a few of the hardier roses which are found on the plan and are still commercially available, particularly some climbers. It’s possible that more of the garden’s history will be uncovered, as well.

Today, the rose garden boasts over 200 varieties that span the history of rose breeding. One in particular, the American Pillar noted for its white center and red edges, has survived over 90 years.

Bearing in mind that he was given to hyberbole, perhaps the final words here can nonetheless be provided by Franklin Brett: “Probably nowhere in the world,” he claimed, “can finer roses be found.”