Transplanting history in Grandview

GRANDVIEW -- A literal living piece of history has been moved here.

The Grandview Rose Garden, a 58-year-old ornamental fixture of the city's Westside Park, has a new home because of a declining pool of volunteers and dwindling city resources.

Bearing shovels and leather gloves, nearly 90 volunteers and city employees gathered Saturday -- the first day of spring -- to replant 300 bushes around a proposed pathway and gazebo in Palacios Parkway near the east entrance of town along Wine Country Road.

"I think it's a great idea because it's going to make the rose garden more visible," said Sue Johnson, a volunteer organizer.

The volunteers worked in teams to space, plant and bury the roots of the neatly pruned roses throughout the morning. During breaks, they munched on hamburgers from the Grandview High School National Honor Society and raised their shovels for a group photo, snapped by Parks and Recreation Director Mike Carpenter standing on an elevated backhoe blade.

"We're a city on the move," said Mayor Norm Childress, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and work clothes.

Roses are an integral part of the identity for this 9,100-resident city.

The garden has nearly 1,000 bushes, some as old as the garden itself, arranged in a basketball-court-size circle in the northeast corner of Westside Park, tucked behind the pool. The city's official flower is the rose.

However, city leaders say they need to move the garden -- and downsize it -- to make way for needed parking in Westside Park, make the roses more visible and save money.

The garden started in 1952 as a project of the Grandview Garden Club. It was maintained by an army of volunteers, including Johnson's parents.

However, in the 1990s, volunteer help waned and more of the responsibility for pruning, spraying and weeding fell to city crews.

The city spent nearly $5,000 each year keeping up the garden, a number that would have been much higher if not for Johnson and a few other dedicated volunteers who still pitched in.

Said Johnson: "300 roses are a whole lot easier to take care of than almost 1,000."

The city will either sell the remaining 700 roses or give them away while accepting donations from residents that might want to plant them in their yards.

Then, the new rose garden will function much the same way as the old one, getting its routine tender loving care from a combination of city crews and volunteers.

The colorful, thorny plants will greet visitors both driving into town and those using the pedestrian path that links Prosser and Grandview.

"It's going to be pretty cool," Carpenter said.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.