Deadheading Roses

I love to visit the Memphis Botanic Gardens.  It is so beautiful and peaceful and there is such a variety of plants and gardens to experience.  However, the Rose Garden is one place that creates mixed emotions.  When I was about 13, my Mom enrolled my older sister and me in the Green Teen (I think that was the name) volunteer program.

As part of this volunteer program, my sister and I would get dropped off at the garden for about four hours, during which time we were assigned various jobs.  The task that stands out in my memory, more than any other, was deadheading the roses.

The Rose Garden, like all good rose gardens, is full sun.  Full sun + Summertime in Memphis = icky, uncomfortably hot weather.  And another thing, it's a good-sized garden.  I'm not sure how many rose bushes there are, but there are enough that we never finished with the deadheading by the end of our four hour shift.

Were were given gloves (for protection from the thorns), trash bags and pruners and told to remove all the dead roses from the garden.  Sounds like an easy enough task, right?  Well, my 13-year old memory recalls it being HOT, tedious, painful work. 

As miserable as I remember being, when I go back to visit the Memphis Botanic Garden (now 15 years later) and stroll through "my" Rose Garden, I have a sense of pride.  I hope the Green Teen program still exists.  If it does, the volunteers are probably teens who are forced into manual labor and hate it just as much as I did. But hopefully in a few years they'll be able to visit the gardens and be proud of the work they did to make it such a beautiful place to visit.

A few other pictures from our garden visit: