Portland International Rose Test Garden

If roses are your cup of tea, the International Rose Test Garden in Portland, Oregon might just delight you. It sits across from the towering Portland Japanese Garden and is free for all to enjoy. It’s easily accessible by shuttle and makes a nice starting point within Washington Park.

A lot of people seemed to be enjoying the grounds of the International Rose Test Garden. It makes sense since there are so many roses and structures to explore. At one point, I even caught sight of a proposal happening in a more secluded area of the International Rose Test Garden. It was a nice sight and for a moment, I couldn’t help but to wonder if I was truly witnessing a proposal happening. It was just a very surreal moment and I couldn’t help but to keep asking myself if they were practicing for a play. I guess it doesn’t help much either that the media has managed to trick me into believing that proposals can only be done when both parties are dressed lavishly. (The two were dressed ready to conquer every ride at Disneyland! No joke.) I am happy to have seen such a magical moment and am sure without a doubt that a “yes” was said!

Although the grounds of the International Rose Test Garden are quite vast, I didn’t spend as much time as I could have on it. I was already quite tired when I had arrived and it didn’t help much either that the weather was quite warm. Portland isn’t known to be sunny but when it’s sunny, you feel the warmth and depending on how you’re dressed for the day, you may feel quite weighed down from whatever you’re wearing.

Various roses can be found in the International Rose Test Garden. As usual, I was drawn to the more unique looking ones. The bigger, the better. The more colorful, the better. I didn’t care for the “scrawny” looking ones since I’d seen enough of those and found them to be boring.

Talking about boring, the International Rose Test Garden actually has a gift shop! It’s a rather small gift shop but there are a lot of knick knacks they sell which may be of interest to anyone that finds the gardens boring as well as those that find the gardens alluring. For your information, I did buy something from the gift shop! It was just one thing but still…

I want to also share that I saw a cute guy here at the gift shop as well as on the grounds of the International Rose Test Garden. No, we did not communicate with each other but I’m glad for the encounter.

The missed connection happened like this: I was coming out of the gift shop and he was about to enter the gift shop. Thank you, gift shop! LOL But on the serious side, he actually had come with a female, who I assume is his girlfriend. Meh.

Anyway, do I recommend visiting the International Rose Test Garden? If you’re going to be in the Washington Park area, I say yes!