Posted 9:42 pm Thursday, October 13, 2011
Send to Kindle
2011 Rose Show Free To Public
The 78th Texas Rose Festival offers a full slate of activities for the public, beginning today and continuing through Saturday in Tyler.
The festivities kick off with the Rose Show at 10 a.m. today at the Rose Garden Center, 420 Rose Park Drive.
This floral display is free to the public.
The Rose Show opening includes a ribbon-cutting ceremony, featuring TRF court members and a morning prayer service.
"This year's Rose Show is promised to be more elaborate and spectacular than ever before," Rose Show Chairman Kelley Brownlow said. "We believe the rose display will honor the rose industry and Tyler in a very special way."
The Rose Show committee has partnered with David Austin Roses Inc. for its Rose Show display. Ms. Brownlow said Austin's design concept "goes nicely with the Rose Festival's theme, 'The Grand Illusion.'"
David Austin Roses and local volunteers will implement the design using a mixture of garden roses and cut flowers for a magical landscape.
Rose Festival officials said the Rose Show will include an English Medieval castle as a large backdrop to showcase the floral areas, including an English rose garden and a "princess" with a flowing gown and bodice made entirely of cut flowers.
David Austin Roses, which was founded in 1961, has participated in major floral shows throughout the world, including The Chelsea Flower Show in London, England, and will have a booth with information and retail products, including roses that perform well in Texas' climate available for purchase during the show.
"Everyone is going to be extremely pleased with what a difference this Rose Show will bring to the event," said Randy Grooms, vice president of the Rose Show Committee. "They truly are one of the world's premier rose growers and have participated in competitive industry and non-industry flower shows to highlight their product, and we are really thrilled as a group to be able to partner with them. They are going to bring world-class quality to the rose show."
Helen Caine, U.S. manager at the David Austin Roses Tyler office, said the 11x20-foot castle will be surrounded by 2,000 stem-cut roses, as well as 1,000 roses made into a pathway to complete the English-style garden. She said the company was eager to work on such a project.
"We've been here for 12 years," she said of the Tyler office. "This is our main distribution center. We've been working with the Tyler Rose Garden on a trial ground. There's already a David Austin garden in the Rose Garden. The relationship just grew, and we thought they'd be a good partner to work with."
The display will envelope guests with fragrances and colors ranging from creamy whites and pinks to yellows and crimson red.
"The English roses are a combination of old roses in which they've got lots of petals and have a very graceful look and fragrances as well, which the modern roses have lost," Ms. Caine said. "We've combined them with the modern roses which have the fabulous range of colors and are disease-resistant which gives us what we know today as the David Austin English roses."
Rose Festival officials look forward to a bigger, better series of events this year that has something for everybody.
"I really do think it's going to be something we've never seen before, but it'll also be reminiscent of the fantastic Rose Shows of the past," Ms. Brownlow said. "It's a nice step forward and a nice nod back.
