Renowned Southern Miss Rose Garden Attracts Visitors from across Country

Obviously it's iconic with the new centennial gateway that we've got and the dome in the background. If you Google USM, generally you'll find one of two things; that dome with black eyed susans or this rose garden. And it's something that people travel from all over the nation to see really, which I was surprised because it's a good sized garden, it's also a test garden of sorts, but we've, the people who had the vision to put this in and do it in the manner that they did it, have the access through it and so forth for maintenance. I just think it's key the fact that it's on Hardy street, I don't know how many cars a day go by but it's tens of thousands. And everybody notices when they bloom, and it keys them to their little spring maintenance and kind of gets their juices going for the spring to want to do work in their own yard. But as far as what it means to this university itself, it's a key component, I really think it is. I don't think you can oversell that point. I just think it's important for people to feel like that sense of place again that we always have in Mississippi. This is one and it's a consistent. And we haven't changed it out, we do change the varieties as we find out that they're not going to perform or what have you, but year after year since it was put in people have always pilgrimage here. We've got great access of parking and that's why we've also improved the gateway all the way down to this spot to kind of fill it in. We've got a grotto full of benches behind it now so people can go in the shade while their family and so forth takes pictures out here. It's just a nice spot, but mainly it's something that's so focal from the street, I don't think you can ignore it. So my role in this was to just get it back to where I think it should be in accordance with professional maintenance standards. And that means cutting no corners, that means no quick fixes, and that means things like I told you like repairing the edges that were hit by mowers and mowing in here by hand, making sure we don't throw grass into the beds that re grows as weeds and using less pesticides and herbicides so that we can say we've reduced our pesticide and herbicide use by 50 percent which we have. Typically right after founders day, this year it was real close to founder's day it's what they call the first flush of bloom. You've cut them back to 12 to 18 inches, and they put out new shoots from the ground and those are the ones that really put on the nice flowers. I mean you'll still see flowers but the smaller, kind of little tiny sickly looking ones, those are from last year's you know improperly pruned or what have you, so we cut them to 12 to 18 inches so they come back I'd say chest high by around Founder's day, March 30th. But by April 15th they've got a first flush of bloom, this whole garden is typically one uniform height pretty much. And that's when every stalk and every cane has a nice bloom on it, and that's when people start to notice it and they'll comment every year, but after that they really do re-bloom, they re-bloom constantly. And it just depends, if you get to these in time, and you pick these dead blooms off, they'll come back each year, I mean you know, each time you prune them. And some will sporadically bloom like you can see but if you want them to continually grow, you just keep pruning back the old and they'll bloom until October or November. I haven't been here for a Fall, but I know typically roses, they'll go to October- November. So they do, that's one of the biggest questions I get, is when do I prune them and how low, and then do they bloom all summer. And yes they absolutely bloom consistently and constantly.