Elizabeth Park Conservancy Celebrates Annual Rose Weekend
Rose Weekend
Elizabeth Park • 1561 Asylum Ave, Hartford, CT 06105
June 14 – 16, 2024
Free Event
Rose Weekend
America’s oldest public rose garden will celebrate its annual Rose Weekend on Friday afternoon, June 14 from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Saturday & Sunday, June 15 & 16 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Elizabeth Park, with a wide range of free educational and family-friendly activities.
The annual event showcases Elizabeth Park’s stunning rose gardens at their peak of seasonal beauty, featuring thousands of rose bushes and arches in bloom.
Rose Weekend highlights include a children’s dance performance; poetry readings; free rose garden tours; painting in the Park by local artists; displays by community, cultural, and arts organizations; a scavenger hunt for the whole family; and a bonsai exhibition.
Friday afternoon at 4:00, the Performance Company at CT Dance Academy presents a Children’s Dance Performance on the John G. Martin Foundation Stage.
Saturday, June 15, presents Plein-air Painters in the Park and Poets in the Park. Area artists are invited to set up an easel wherever they like in the Park, and interact with visitors who will stop to watch them paint. Poets in the Park, sponsored by The Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens and hosted by poet Anita Durkin, will take place from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. under the tent on the Rose Garden Lawn. Featured poets include Frederick-Douglass Knowles reading from his collection “BlackRoseCity,” memories of a city youth growing up in Norwich, Connecticut and Christina Baptista, who was chosen to sail aboard the 1841 vessel Charles W. Morgan. She will read from “Taking Her Back,” her collection that gives voice to the immigrant experience, particularly the Portuguese men who sailed aboard 19th century whaling boats.
Also reading will be Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, from his poetry collection “Common Grace.” His collection is a triptych, exploring the inherited trauma within his Japanese-American family, his life as an artist, and his bond with his wife. His father lived through the American internment camps for Japanese Americans during WWII, and his mother lived through the firebombing of Tokyo. His poems present private moments and sweeping thoughts on Asian American life.
Each reading will be followed by a Q/A.
On Saturday there will also be a tour of the University of St. Joseph School of Pharmacy Medicinal Herb Garden in Elizabeth Park at 11 a.m. and the Falun Dafa Quigong group will hold exercise demonstrations on both days at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m.
June 16 is Rose Weekend’s Community Day, featuring displays by community, cultural, and arts groups under the tent on the Rose Garden lawn from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., including a scavenger hunt for the whole family, and EPC tulip bulbs for sale. Exhibitors include Advocacy to Legacy, Bonsai Society of Greater Hartford (on the John G. Martin Foundation Stage), Falun Dafa Quigong Movement, Hartford Artisans Weaving Center, Hartford Stage, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Jewish Family Services of Greater Hartford, Mark Twain House, Playhouse Theatre Group, Rhododendron Society of CT, University of St. Joseph’s Campus Sculpture Project, and the Wadsworth Atheneum.
On Saturday and Sunday, EPC’s Rosarian Stephen Scanniello will lead tours of the Helen S Kaman Rose Garden at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
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