When you view New York City’s Central Park from above, it almost looks like someone dropped a huge cookie cutter onto the city, popped out an 840-acre rectangle of buildings and streets, and replaced it with a huge swath of green. Schenectady’s Central Park isn’t quite like that, but it does, like the same-named downstate oasis, provide a verdant contrast to the surrounding metropolis and provides residents with a peaceful escape. Its crown jewel? The Central Park Rose Garden.
In 1959, construction began on a garden at the Wright Avenue entrance to Schenectady’s Central Park on the site of an old tennis court. The following spring, 400 rose bushes were planted, followed by more in the fall, and several hundred more the year after that. By the 1970s, the garden boasted 7,500 rose bushes in all different varieties—plus pools, a triangular fountain, an arched bridge and weeping cherry trees—and won the American Rose Society’s very first “outstanding public garden” award.
Things started to fall apart after that, as city budgets were stretched thinner and park personnel were laid off. The rose garden declined due to lack of care until 1993, when a group of concerned citizens decided to take action. Led by Schenectady Rose Society member Dave Gade, the Rose Garden Restoration Committee was formed. The committee installed a new watering system, planted more than 3,000 new bushes and hired a part-time gardener. Today, the garden is home to 100 memorial bushes planted in honor of crime victims, a walkway comprised of engraved bricks (which serve as a fundraiser for the garden) and a pergola, which was completed in 2017.
On a recent walk through the garden, a father and son were playing frisbee by the lower pond, a couple was taking selfies by the fountain and an old man was sitting on a bench taking in the more than 300 rose varieties, including grandiflora, shrub and floribunda. On another day, you might see a wedding party taking photos, painters, volunteers tending the roses or even residents of Kingsway Community on an afternoon outing. Whomever it is you see, we can almost guarantee one thing—they’ll be smiling.