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The Municipal Rose GardenA WPA garden that waited ten years for its roses

The Tyler Rose Garden at 420 Rose Park Dr. covers 14 acres and is free and open dawn to dark every day, as listed in September 2026.1The WPA project ended in 1942 as “a rose garden without roses,” and it stayed that way for ten years.2It opened to the public on June 16, 1952.3

Plate IIIA rose bed, in plan
Where
420 Rose Park Dr., Tyler
Size
14 acres
Cost
Free
Open
Dawn to dark, every day
Visitors
More than 100,000 a year, in a 2025 report4
Seen from a height, long rectangular rose beds divided by lawn and walks run toward a line of trees under a blue sky with white clouds.
Beds and lawn in the Rose Garden, July 12, 2021.amanderson2, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), via FlickrThe original at Flickr

IBefore the garden1912 to 1936

“a group of rose enthusiasts plus a sympathetic Park Board equals a civic garden anywhere”

The 1938 American Rose Annual’s formula for a municipal rose garden5
  1. The city bought the fairgrounds tract that holds the Rose Garden, to keep the East Texas Fair in Tyler; the sources name the seller as Col. H. R. Herndon or the estate of W. S. Herndon61912
  2. For the first festival a crew planted a three-acre display garden of 10,000 rose bushes and 300 trees, donated by Smith County nurserymen, on land the nomination calls both city property and a tract “on loan” from Julius Bergfeld71933
  3. J. Horace McFarland, back to speak at the festival, urged Tyler to secure a city-owned rose garden after Bergfeld said he wanted his land back81936

IIThe WPA garden1938 to 1942

In summer 1938 architect Keith Maxwell brought the Texas Rose Festival Association a plan to build the garden as a WPA project, first estimated at $50,000, with the federal government paying about $45,000.9Newspapers that August described it variously as three or seven themed gardens: a “typical” Texas garden, Italian, French provincial, cloister, moat, colonial and informal.10

Official word that the WPA had approved the park and rose garden came to City Manager George Fairtrace on October 22, 1938.11The 81-acre park was reported to be “the largest municipal park created by the WPA,” and its 20-acre rose garden was declared “the world’s largest” municipal garden, according to the Rose Garden’s National Register nomination.12

The nomination says work began on December 1, 1938, when 25 men reported to the fairgrounds, with 120 WPA laborers by mid-January 1939 and 200 on the garden alone later that month; the dedication plaque reads “Construction Started 1939.”13The 1940 plant list called for 18,482 first-grade roses and 11,043 flowering shrubs and evergreens.14

A yellow-brick wall with an arched opening at the top of a flight of brick steps; plaques on the wall and on posts, clipped shrubs, and red and pink roses in front.
The archway in the Rose Garden’s yellow-brick wall, June 22, 2019.Larry D. Moore / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Credited here under CC BY-SA 4.0.The original at Wikimedia Commons
Two stone retaining walls step down a slope beside a lawn, with a walk climbing between them and an iron railing above.
Stone retaining walls in the Rose Garden, June 22, 2019.Larry D. Moore / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Credited here under CC BY-SA 4.0.The original at Wikimedia Commons

IIIA rose garden without roses1942 to 1952

In January 1942 Rosemont Nursery, run by Henry Thompson’s parents, was low bidder for the garden’s roses, but the city had only $56 left for plants.18In February the newly formed Azalea Club pledged 270 rose bushes, but it was too late.19On March 21, 1942, the WPA ended five Tyler projects to free 200 men for farm work, among them the rose garden and an African American fair exhibit building at Fair Park.20

The WPA had finished the terraces, ponds, arched wall and reflecting pool.2After the war the press decried the unfinished garden as an eroded, gullied red clay hillside and an eyesore.21

IVHenry ThompsonFor whom the garden is dedicated

Henry L. Thompson grew up in his family’s Rosemont Nursery, graduated from Tyler High School in 1936 and studied landscape architecture and floriculture at Cornell before helping finish the garden.22At the 1938 festival, still a student, he built the principal Rose Show as a formal colonial garden of more than 1,000 growing rose bushes, the first time live bushes were used in the show.23

He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942. His plane disappeared over the English Channel in November 1944, and the garden was dedicated to him when it opened.24

His wife, Laura Thompson, took up his festival work, assisting with the design of rose shows and floats when the festival resumed in 1947.25In 1967 their son Bryan Thompson turned the State of Texas Camellia Test Garden, set up in the garden’s southern woods in 1958, into the Camellia Garden trail.26

Henry L. Thompson

  1. 1936Graduated from Tyler High School; then Cornell, in landscape architecture and floriculture
  2. 1938Built the festival’s principal Rose Show, the first with live rose bushes
  3. 1942Joined the Army Air Corps
  4. Nov. 1944His plane disappeared over the English Channel
  5. 1952The garden dedicated to him

VBob Shelton and the soil1951 and 1952

When the city revived the garden around 1951, Dr. Eldon Lyle warned that the fairground’s dense red clay would strangle rose roots, and judged the project doomed without new soil.27

The Rose Garden nomination says park superintendent Bob Shelton, a Navy veteran, revived the garden from 1951, wresting $5,000 from the city to rebuild the terraces, reclaim the ponds and prepare the beds; the city says Robert Shelton Jr. became superintendent in 1950.28He had crews dig the beds three feet deep and refill them with leaves, sandy soil and sewage sludge, steam-sterilized at a local laundry.29

Shelton saw the garden as “a living catalogue of Smith County roses,” a showcase for the varieties grown within about 35 miles of Tyler.30The city describes it as a living catalog of roses produced by the Tyler rose industry.31

June 16, 1952

The Tyler Municipal Rose Garden opened to the public with 3,000 bushes donated and planted by local gardeners and nurserymen. Tyler’s 2000 National Register study, citing the city, says roses were first planted in 1951.3

Rose bushes with pink and red blooms in the foreground and a broad tree trunk; beyond, lawns, curving walks, a pond and rose beds under tall trees.
The Rose Garden, May 18, 2014.Carol M. Highsmith, photographer, May 18, 2014. The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-highsm-28848). Cropped at the right edge, where people are posing for photographs.The original at the Library of Congress
A rose bush with deep pink blooms beside a brick-edged walk, a clipped hedge and a pond behind it.
Roses by a pond in the Rose Garden, May 18, 2014.Carol M. Highsmith, photographer, May 18, 2014. The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-highsm-28850). Cropped to the lower half of the frame.The original at the Library of Congress

VIOld downtown in the gardenFountains from the square and the wagon yard

When the 1912 Smith County Courthouse was demolished in 1953, Shelton moved two of its stone fountains to the North Garden, where they still stand.32The Wagon Wheel patio’s fountain came from the “wagon yard,” a 19th-century farmers’ market near downtown Tyler.33

In the early 1960s a brick wall and reflecting pool with animated “dancing waters” fountains, given by the Vaughn Foundation and M. J. Harvey, closed the east end of the Queen’s Court lawn.34

VIIHow many bushes?Each count with its date and source

Counts of its bushes have run from 3,000 at the opening to more than 38,000; the latest, in May 2026, is about 15,000.

Rose bushes in the Rose Garden, by date and source. One scale; an open end means the source gives no upper figure.
WhenBushesDrawn to scale
194018,482the plant list, roses to be planted14
June 19523,000at the opening3
Spring 19546,000175 varieties; the National Register nomination35
195825,500375 varieties; the National Register nomination35
1960At least 25,000some 400 varieties; a national garden guide36
Oct. 1967More than 30,000more than 400 varieties; Southern Living37
1977About 36,000Bob Shelton, near retirement38
2000Over 30,000about 450 varieties; the Congressional Record39
Spring 2018More than 38,000the National Register nomination40
May 2021More than 32,000600 cultivars; Texas Senate Resolution 48441
Sept. 2025More than 38,000about 600 varieties; the Tyler Morning Telegraph42
May 2026About 15,000300 varieties; the Tyler Morning Telegraph42

a count “more than” or “at least” the plan, not a count

The garden lost some 8,000 rose bushes in the record cold of December 1983.43Near retirement in 1977, Shelton also claimed more than 500,000 visitors a year, which the nomination calls a possible overstatement.38Visitor counts have ranged from 750,000 claimed in 1985 and an estimated 150,000 in 1990 to 75,000 to 100,000 a year by 2018 measures, with about 10,000 during the four festival days.44

How many acres?

  • 20the rose garden in the 1938 plan16
  • 13.729the tract reserved for it on the fairgrounds45
  • 22a “municipal park,” on the 1975 state marker46
  • 11.7inside the National Register boundary, 201845
  • 14as listed in September 20261

The last two counts, eight months apart

The 150 roses in pink stand for the May 2026 count; all 380 stand for the September 2025 count, so the 230 in outline are the difference between the two.

One rose for every 100 bushes. A drawing to scale, not a map of the beds.

Both counts are the Tyler Morning Telegraph’s, eight months apart; the later one is the lower.42

VIIIWithin the gardenHeritage roses, test beds, a museum

A white arbor over a walk, with beds of red roses and petunias beside it and lawns and trees beyond.
An arbor over a walk in the Rose Garden, May 28, 2016.Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)The original at Wikimedia Commons
A long flower bed with a small sign runs between two walks, lawns and clipped hedges on either side and large trees beyond.
A long bed between two walks, May 28, 2016.Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)The original at Wikimedia Commons
A curving walk through a shady planting of tall trees, shrubs and edged ground cover.
A shaded walk in the Rose Garden, May 28, 2016.Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)The original at Wikimedia Commons

The Heritage Rose Garden

The Heritage Rose Garden, in the southwest corner, began in the 1970s as the Tyler Lions Club’s Sensory Perception Garden for the Blind, and the Gertrude Windsor Garden Club adopted it in 1986 to showcase antique roses.47It is 0.6 acre by the nomination’s measure and one acre by the Garden Club of America’s. The Smith County Master Gardeners joined it as partners in 1993, and Winter Storm Uri in 2021, the 2023 drought and a hailstorm on February 11, 2024 killed many of its plants.48

Test beds and theme gardens

Shelton set aside a quarter-acre north of the formal garden as a test area for new varieties; Texas Highways in 1995 and the 2018 nomination called it one of only 24 such research gardens in the country.49Later came the Meditation Garden (1990), the Shade Garden with 25 Japanese maple varieties (1997), the IDEA Garden (1999) and the David Austin English Rose Garden (2003).50

The Rose Garden Center and museum

The WPA entrance pavilion, enclosed as the Garden Center in 1953, was torn down in 1991 for the 30,000-square-foot Rose Garden Center and Rose Museum, which opened in 1992.51The Tyler Rose Museum displays festival costumes, crowns and memorabilia dating back to the first festival in 1933; adult admission is $3.50 and children 2 to 11 pay $2, as listed in September 2026.52

The festival

IXOn the National RegisterListed in 2019

The Rose Garden was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019 and named a Lone Star Legacy Park in 2023.53After a two-year application, the city celebrated the listing on October 17, 2019.54It is reference number 100003539; the nomination credits architect Keith Maxwell with the design and landscape architect Henry L. Thompson with shaping it, with periods of significance from 1938 to 1941 and from 1952 to 1969.55

The nomination calls it the largest municipal rose garden in the United States by size and number of roses, with more than 38,000 bushes counted in spring 2018, and notes that the larger Hershey garden is privately owned.40In 1960 a national garden guide had ranked the “Tyler Rose Park” the second-largest rose garden in America, behind Columbus, Ohio.36

In 2018 the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association named it one of the state’s Great Public Spaces.56Texas Senate Resolution 484, adopted May 25, 2021, called it “believed to be the largest public collection of roses in the United States.”41In 2023 it was one of seven Texas parks and open spaces named Lone Star Legacy Parks.57

A dark plaque on a brick wall, headed History of the Tyler Municipal Rose Garden, under the emblem of the Gertrude Windsor Garden Club and the Garden Club of America, with several paragraphs of text.
A plaque on the garden’s history, June 22, 2019.Larry D. Moore / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Credited here under CC BY-SA 4.0.The original at Wikimedia Commons