If you’re visiting Kortrijk, the international rose garden is a must see place to stop on your tour. It’s a beautiful park with the size of approximately one hectare located at Kasteel ‘t Hooghe (Doorniksesteenweg 218, 8500 Kortrijk). The rose garden already exists since 1959 and gives you the possibility to spectate more than 200 quality roses in the demonstration garden. There is no entry fee so don’t hesitate to come and do a tour between the good smelling roses. If you want to visit the garden on it’s best you should visit it between June and August.
The rose garden contains 3 parts:
- The demonstration garden
- The test garden.
- The historic garden
The demonstration garden is the biggest part of the rose garden. Here you can find approximately 200 various plants. The demonstration garden is split in 4 big parts: the ‘snijrozen’ garden, the ‘gouden roos’ garden, the English garden and the the French garden.
In the test garden they grow each year 100 to 150 new experimental roses plant by European plant breeders. The roses get to stay 2 years and get evaluated 3 times in the first and 2 times in the second year. After there 2 years of good care and evaluation there comes an international jury of rose experts, they evaluate every rose in the test garden to look for the best new rose. The most important criteria’s are: decorative value, resistance against sickness and growing strength.
There is also a historic garden which shows you some beautiful old variations of roses. These roses stay in the ground so this part doesn’t changes that much.