The Portland Rose Garden

After my walk through Portland’s Japanese Gardens, I meandered down to the International Rose Test Garden. There were roses upon roses of varietals, all being assessed for their awesomeness in eleven (11!) different attributes. There are several of these test sites nationally, another one being the rose gardens at the Chicago Botanic Gardens in fact.

I’ll admit that roses, while lovely, have never topped my list for favorite flowers. I know, I know. I’m an unromantic curmudgeon. Nevertheless, I will also admit that a whole garden full of roses makes an impression.

There’s something orderly + symmetrical about roses, which I realize sounds like another completely unromantic thing to say, but I’m a bit of a nerd + nerds find things like symmetry beautiful. In the same way, I was able to appreciate the intentional asymmetry of the Japanese gardens, these orderly rows of blooms had an intentional symmetry that was beautiful in its own right.

Let’s see, how many more times can I use the word symmetry in this post?

I would have stayed in the rose garden to watch the sunset, but I had a long hike down to my bus stop + I didn’t want to make it in the dark. Thank you, Google maps for taking me down this beautiful wooded pathway that was tucked in between switchbacks. I would never have found that gem after sunset.

The rose garden + the Japanese garden were perhaps the perfect compliments to each other. I enjoyed them both, but since I’m allowed to pick favorites, the Japanese garden would totally win in a fight. Want to see what I mean? Here’s the post.