| The Unity Village Rose Garden has been a place of serenity and beauty for decades. Designed by Waldo Rickert Fillmore, Unity Village architect and son of Unity co-founders Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, the rose garden is one of the focal points of the beautiful 1,400-acre Unity Village campus in Missouri. | |||
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Featuring more than 800 rose bushes and 62 rose varieties, the garden is one of more than 130 public rose gardens nationwide, and only one of four in Missouri, accredited by the All-America Rose Selections, Inc. For the past 15 years, the rose garden has been selected as an All-America Rose Selections winner for top rose performance in 15 categories, including overall beauty, disease resistance and general ease of maintenance.
Tender Loving Care
The Rose Garden is carefully tended year-round by rose care specialist Doug Kimberlin and landscape supervisor Barry Mathews. According to Mathews, growing roses in the Midwest can be challenging. “Missouri is a difficult place to grow roses because of the climate extremes here,” he says, “but our roses still look as good as those in other places like Florida and California that have more temperate climates.”
Kimberlin and Mathews' annual rose care program includes routine fertilizing, mulching, trimming and watering. In winter the roses are covered to protect the crowns. “We start with good healthy plants and do our best to protect them in extreme weather,” notes Kimberlin.
Because long-term survival varies by variety and annual weather conditions, Mathews says rose placement varies from year to year. “We used to plant them in categorized flower beds, but they change so much that we just label each bush variety. We receive a lot of favorable comments from really ‘up-to-speed rose folks' who come here to see what we have and what we are doing.”
Reaching their peak about mid-spring, the roses are generally in bloom until after the first frost in November. “It's fun to watch them bloom in the spring," Kimberlin says. “Sometimes there are only buds when I leave for the weekend, but when I come back on a Monday it looks like a whole new world out here.”
Creating Lasting Memories
Many of the first rose bushes planted in the rose garden were donated by Unity supporters and employees, often in honor of loved ones. That tradition continues today.
“Lots of people who live in the area say that if they have visitors from out of town, this is the first place they bring them,” Kimberlin says. “That makes me feel good.”
Today visitors will find Floribunda, Grandiflora, Hybrid Tea and Shrub Rose beds featuring a beautiful variety of Carefree Delight, Bridal Blush, John F. Kennedy, Piscali, Bonica, Eclipse, Miss All-American Beauty, and Peace roses, among numerous other varieties. The “Pink Peace” and “Love and Peace” roses here are a derivation of a special hybrid Peace Rose introduced in the United States in 1945 to commemorate the end of World War II. In addition, every year that the Rose Garden is selected as an All America Rose Selections winning garden, Unity chooses and receives approximately 30 of each variety of regional prize-winning roses from the organization.
Unity Village is a very popular location in the Kansas City area for meetings, special events and celebrations. As a result, a large number of engagement, wedding, commitment and anniversary celebrations are held on campus amidst the beautiful and serene ambiance of the rose garden.
Mathews' father recently showed him an old video clip of him running around the central courtyard as a child. “One of the kids ran right in front of the camera in diapers and it was me!” he laughs. “So I've known these gardens for a long time. Of course, at the time I didn't know I would be working here, taking care of them year round.”
Many people also choose the rose garden as the final resting place for the ashes of their loved ones. Ash-scattering at Unity Village dates back to 1931. Today, family and friends can arrange for a special rose garden memorial ceremony through the Unity Village Chapel.
