Category:Rose Gardens

Brighton Parks and Gardens 50.837258 , -0.143494 coordinates: 50.837258 , -0.143494

Loading map...

1939: Rotunda Cafe and Rose Gardens [image info]

Rose Gardens, postcard [image info]

2017: The Rose Gardens, looking away from the Rotunda. The roses are slightly on the wane here, with the onset of autumn [image info]

Preston Park's Rose Gardens were designed by Captain Bertie Maclaren to create a "draw" for the park to encourage Brightonians to visit.

2001 replanting

A Heritage Lottery Fund grant allowed the Rose Garden to be restored and replanted in 2001.

While "modern" rose breeds went through a phase of being bred for the size and attractiveness of their individual flower-heads (with some other attributes suffering) the current planting incorporates four thousand more traditional shrub-rose bushes, selected for their colour and smell.

The result is an intense and intoxicating olfactory experience when walking through the garden in season, the rose-scent equivalent of "surround sound".

Sculptures

Inhabiting the Rose Garden are two statues representing two of the four seasons. These statues originally adorned the Brighton Aquarium, and became excess to requirements after an Aquarium redesign. There were originally four of them, but at some point two seem to have gone missing.

Before the roses

Images exist of the gardens outside the Rotunda Cafe, apparently planted with Herbaceous plants, and referred to as the Sunken Gardens, or the New Sunken Gardens. This seems to have been the first incarnation of Maclaren's gardens, before the rose planting.