By Roselyn Fauth
Every so often I bump into someone at Caroline Bay who has come all the way from Europe or the United States just to see our roses. They arrive with maps and cameras and that excited look gardeners get when they know they have found something special. It is funny really. We walk past these gardens so often that we almost forget how special they are. Meanwhile, people from the other side of the world tel lme how they plan their holidays around them. It makes me wonder how many locals realise just how much work sits behind these places... and how lucky we are!
You Can Explore a Garden Shaped by a Lifetime
The Trevor Griffiths Rose Garden below the Piazza at Caroline Bay is usually the first stop for visitors. It has that wow factor that makes people slow down as soon as they step inside it. The design is crisp and formal, but the roses do their own thing and soften the whole space. I once met a couple from Germany who said they had wanted to see the garden ever since reading one of Trevor Griffiths’ books in the 1990s. They could hardly believe a collection like this was free to wander.
Trevor spent most of his life collecting, studying and growing roses. He had strong opinions, deep knowledge, and a way of talking about roses that made them feel like old friends than plants. When the Beautifying Society asked whether his collection could become a public garden, the idea took off. Volunteers, family members, council staff and fundraisers got behind it. What we walk through today is essentially Trevor’s lifetime of work arranged into one beautiful, open-air botanic museum and classroom.
Across Town its a Completely Different Story
The Species Rose Garden at the Botanic Gardens offers something else entirely. If the Griffiths garden is the polished performance, the species garden is the rehearsal room where roses began. These are the wild ones. Some date back millions of years in their original forms. They have five simple petals, tough stems, and bright sometimes massive rose hips. Walk with care, because as I have found out leaning in for photos, their thornes are super knarly!
Local and visiting gardeners love this collection because you can actually see the backbone of the modern roses many of us enjoy at home. There is something refreshing about that. No fuss. No perfect symmetry. Just roses the way nature made them. Close your eyes at both gardens and listen. Which has more polinators? Why do you think that is?
There is a Reason Why These Two Rose Gardens Matter Together
Most towns have a rose garden. But not many have two that tell the whole story from beginning to almost-present. Timaru does. In one visit to our small city, you can walk from wild species to the carefully bred modern forms created by human hands. I think the contrast facinating.
Breeding roses is a fiddly business. It takes patience and a bit of stubbornness. You cross one rose with another and hope the new plant keeps the best bits: the fragrance from one parent, the colour from the other, and the health from somewhere further back in the family tree. People like Trevor Griffiths did this year after year, always chasing the next improvement. Some of those roses ended up in the garden at Caroline Bay. Others inspired a generation of growers.
That is why the two gardens are not just pretty places to take a photo. They show the whole arc of rose history: what nature created first, and what people eventually learned to shape.
I Makes Me Wonder... Do We Appreciate What We’ve Got?
Honestly, I am not sure we always do. You can live in a place for years and still miss the things others travel the world to find. The Species Rose Garden and the Trevor Griffiths Rose Garden are among Timaru’s quiet treasures. They are here because of decades of work from locals who cared enough to graft, water, weed, deadhead, design and dream.
Maybe we should all take a moment next time we walk through them. Not a grand thought or anything. Just a simple one. These gardens are part of our everyday life, and most people do not get anything close to this on their doorstep.
I am really looking forward to our Rose Festival. Though the gardens have taken a beating in the recent hail, the yellows, pinks, reds, and apricots are usually start glowing about now late November early December.
Thank you to everyone who made these gardens possible, I look forward to taking some time to smell the roses this weekend.