International Rose Test Garden
— — the slope a city gave to roses.
Not only on a wall.
“Four and a half acres of terraced beds above the city, the West Hills rising behind and the river plain falling away in front. The garden was laid out in 1917 to keep European rose stock alive through the First World War, and it has kept testing roses ever since. Visitors come for the colour. Hybridisers come to read the labels. On a clear afternoon in June the air carries the scent two terraces down before you see a bloom. from the studio
International Rose Test Garden, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The International Rose Test Garden sits on the eastern slope of Washington Park, about 400 feet above the Willamette River, with a sightline that opens to downtown Portland and, on clear days, Mount Hood. The garden holds roughly 10,000 rose bushes representing more than 600 varieties, laid out across four and a half terraced acres. It was established in 1917 by the Portland Rose Society as a safe haven for European hybrid roses during the First World War, which makes it the oldest continuously operated public rose test garden in the United States. Admission is free, the gates open at dawn, and peak bloom usually arrives in mid-June.
Each bed is planted by variety, not by colour, so the palette shifts as you walk the terraces: a block of coral floribunda gives way to a row of deep crimson hybrid teas, then a panel of soft apricot. The Royal Rosarian Garden, added in 1992, holds the namesake roses of each year's Rose Festival queen. Beyond the formal beds the Shakespeare Garden plants only roses mentioned by name in the plays. Hybridisers ship their unnamed cultivars here for two years of test growing before the garden's judges decide which earn a permanent place and which go home.
The garden flowers from late April through October in Portland's mild maritime climate, but the heaviest flush is the first three weeks of June, timed with the Portland Rose Festival. A second smaller bloom returns in September. Winter pruning, done by volunteers from the Portland Rose Society in late February, is the slowest week of the year and the one most photographers miss. The Rose Garden Store, run by the Friends of the Gardens since 1989, sits at the upper terrace and funds the garden's ongoing care. The garden remains free year-round.