The Rose Garden is Starting to Wake Up After Two Day Raising of the Roses Event

DULUTH, Minn. — The second day of the annual Raising of the Roses was Monday and several volunteers were at the Rose Garden in Duluth helping out.  On Saturday, the roses were raised out of their winter burial and yesterday they were being straightened out, untied, and cleaned off. The city of Duluth relies on community help for projects such as this and it was a nice, warm morning down by the lake making it more attractive for volunteers to come assist.

“We lean on our volunteers pretty heavily. We have people that are coming out from the Rose Society, some people that found us on Facebook, we have some children that are trying to get some volunteer hours to earn badges. We couldn’t do this, it would take a lot longer to do this without their assistance. So when we get a lot of hands out here it makes things go quick,” said Duluth park maintenance worker Matt Bovee.

Those who showed up were provided with the tools and gloves needed to help out. One member of the Rose Society drove down from the Range to help out, but also to learn a thing or two more about roses.

“The reason why I joined is I have a huge, beautiful if I must say so myself, perennial garden, but I know nothing about roses. And so my desire was to learn more,” said Rose Society member and volunteer Diane Torrel.

The next steps for the roses are for additional dirt to be brought in to get the ground level underneath them along with fertilizing and pruning. After that it is watering and waiting for them to get to full bloom which is typically in June.