During the past decades the Botanic Garden Meise has been building an elaborate collection of wild roses comprising 125 of the approximately 150-200 known taxa. In addition the gardens collections hold also 115 horticultural accessions. To display this rich and attractive collection the garden opted for an innovative concept that makes the collection worth visiting the whole year round. This is a challenge as the flowering peak of most wild and old cultivated roses is only very short in early summer. In addition, tender plants need to be integrated as orangery plants.
The heart of the 8,000 m² large rose garden is being landscaped as a labyrinth in the shape of a large rose flower. The different petal shaped beds will house plants from different clades, found in recent molecular studies of roses. As also biogeographic and molecular clock data are available it is possible to take the visitor along the intriguing story of the origin and natural history of roses. Around the labyrinth, beds in the shape of ‘shedding’ petals have been drawn, which will tell the story of garden roses from the historic Chinese and European roses to the origin of modern rose hybrids with a focus on resistant selections and winners from local breeders.
This approach allows for integration of a pleasant walk through the garden with the possibility to organise educational programs on different themes as plant evolution, classification, hybridisation and the role of modern molecular studies in resolving relationships in a both natural and cultivated plant group.