By Lawrence Clifford,

Horticultural Curator

What is the finest flower? Is it the crocus, because it comes early in the spring, after a cold, miserable winter---sometimes when there is still snow on the ground? Is it the tulips because of the amazing variety of colors and because they stand so straight and tall? Is it the peony, because it is so complex and beautiful? Is it the rose of Sharon, the last of the perennials to bloom in profusion as fall begins? Or is it the rose, which lasts all season and comes in many styles, varieties, and colors?

Single pink rose image courtesy of RESURRECT THE ROSES BOTANICAL GARDEN

The Resurrect the Roses Botanical Garden in Leeper Park in South Bend does not try to answer these questions. Instead, it tries to exhibit them all. Each flower can be considered the finest, based on the time of the season, and based on each visitor's unique perspective. All the flowers are in communion, designed to create a place of beauty, peace, tranquility, and reflection. The volunteers who labor in the Garden find a release from the day's tensions.

The east side of Leeper Park has had a city garden in the same location since 1906. (Michigan Street at the bridge which crosses the Saint Joseph River.) Over the years, it has had many iterations and styles and has meant many different things to many people.

First, it was a daylily garden. Then in 1912, it was converted to a rose garden after a flood on the St. Joseph River destroyed the Garden. It had been historically laid out as a rectangular shape.

In the early days, there was a shallow central viewing pond with decorative statues. In the 1960s, it was redesigned as a circular garden. Since those early days, it has suffered from the ebb and flow of time, and a difference in priorities and management by the city park department. It was reimagined over the years, with periods of excellence and periods of decline.

In 2014, our all-volunteer group rediscovered the Rose Garden, but it was in a state of serious decline. The volunteers immediately started an operation to bring the Garden back to its former glory to "Resurrect the Roses."

The Garden was overrun with weeds, ragged grass, debris, dead plants, and negligence. There had previously been as many as 100 rose bushes, and now there were fewer than a dozen. Even those few were declining, nearly dead, diseased, unhealthy, and "unhappy." We established a plan to RESURRECT THE ROSES!!

Image courtesy of RESURRECT THE ROSES BOTANICAL GARDEN

The volunteers began actual work on the Rose Garden in April 2015, with a dozen early volunteers. Rose beds were re-established, over 50 yards of overgrowth and debris were removed, walkways were reconfigured, and the few existing rose bushes were pruned, fertilized, and prepared for the season.

Over the last ten years, the volunteers have worked tirelessly to maintain the Rose Garden and add new features and plants. Despite a major flood in the winter of 2018, which killed or reduced dozens of plants, the volunteers have created an expanded garden.

Today, it has become the Resurrect the Roses Botanical Garden.

It is the city's only true Garden. The Botanical Garden now boasts over 200 rose bushes, each one paid for, planted by, and cared for by the volunteers. Additionally, there are dozens of other specimens, including unique and rare plants, trees, shrubs, bushes, decorative grasses, and even a banana plant!! Forsythia, pear, peach, red maple, spruce, magnolia, tulips, hydrangea, daffodils, canna, calla, miscanthus, 20 varieties of daylily, Japanese iris, Giant lily, Siberian iris, Asiatic lily, Veronica, Quince, mock orange, hibiscus, peony, plum, cherry, viburnum, Japanese maple, dune grass, golden cypress, mums, popcorn plant, coneflower, boxwood, cosmos, salvia, marigold, clematis, garden phlox, dianthus, Shasta daisy, azalea, allium, gladiola, perennial geranium, coreopsis, moss rose, bee balm, red hot poker, boxwood, lupine, crocosmia, and bearded iris all grace the Garden. Each one is an individual, but all are in communion together. The volunteers have added a new pathway from Michigan Street for better access to the Garden, new 10-foot entrance pergolas hand-designed for the new climbing roses, new and refurbished benches, a secondary entrance pathway from the Garden's south side, a totally redesigned and refurbished central Garden, and 4,500 sq. feet of new, healthy interior grass.

RESURRECT THE ROSES BOTANICAL GARDEN on FB

The volunteers have also added other artistic elements to the Garden by sponsoring musical performances in and around the Garden. Musicians such as Don Lerman, Kennedy's Kitchen, Eli Kahn, Brittany Moffit, Seth Creekmore, Molly Moon and Reiley O'Connor, and Frances Luke Accord have all played at events in the Garden.

For the past two years, the Botanical Garden has been featured on the "Arts in Bloom" Garden Walk put on by the Art League of the South Bend Museum of Art. Resurrect the Roses volunteers have also sponsored and commissioned various artists to create in oil and pastel media to create works of art based on the Garden. Alan Larkin, David Allen, Kathy Ready White, Catherine McCormick, Diane Overmeyer, Joan Spohrer, and Shandelle Henson all created in the Garden. Countless other photographers have also graced the Garden, both professional and amateur.

Last year, the Botanical Garden sponsored a" Plein Air Paint In" at the Rose Garden, jointly sponsored with the Northern Indiana Plein Air Society, the Art League, and Venues Parks and Arts, and attended by more than a dozen artists from around the state, who spent the day in the Garden creating art.

This year, the Second Annual "Plein Air Paint In" will be conducted in the Garden all day on Thursday, June 19th, including a free lunchtime concert by Kennedy's Kitchen.

The city’s only botanical garden is a place of beauty, peace, tranquility, and reflection. Although this is a City Park, it has been refurbished and resurrected by the volunteers, virtually without assistance from the city.

Please come and enjoy your Garden today and throughout the year.

Connect, volunteer, donate, and request more information @Resurrect the Roses! at Leeper Park on Facebook.

The Art League invites you to experience A Brush with Nature at the Arts in Bloom Garden Walk, a self-guided tour of stunning Granger home gardens, on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, from 9:30 AM to 7:30 PM. This year’s theme celebrates the intersection of art and nature, with local artists creating live artwork inspired by the beauty of the gardens.

Tickets for the event can be purchased online at southbendart.org, at the South Bend Museum of Art

"Experience the beauty of art and nature at the Arts in Bloom Garden Walk on June 25. Tour stunning Granger gardens at your own pace while local artists create live works inspired by the surroundings. Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door (children 12 & under are free!). Proceeds support arts education at the South Bend Museum of Art. Learn more at southbendart.org."