(Reprinted with the kind permission of the Eugen Ulmer Publishing House from the book “Old Roses and Wild Roses” by Anny Jacob, Heide and Werner Grimm and Bruno Müller.)

Those who have read of the changing fortunes of Cassel’s rose collections and know the scale of the delightful landscapes of Wilhelmshöhe’s Park will understand that the reawakening of the tradition of a rose collection in Cassel is a matter of great importance for “Cassel’s Club of Rose Enthusiasts” (Kasseler Rosenfreunde). On the occasion of the Rose Congress of the Association Rose Enthusiasts (now the Society of Rose Enthusiasts) initiatives led to the desire to make a contribution to the German Federal Garden Show in 1981. The Rose Enthusiasts in Cassel set themselves the task in 1977 of collecting again the old roses of the eighteenth century which had at one time stood in Wilhelmshöhe Park and were still obtainable. At the same time they wanted to publicise Salomon Pinhas’s work as a painter and using the historical rose gardens and their roses to foster the development and cultivation of shrub roses. Here they wished to give examples with the planting of wild roses, their hybrids and old garden roses as well as more recent park roses. It was not easy to put these ideas into practice. The administration of the state palaces and gardens in Bad Homburg had to be convinced of the importance of this task and of the seriousness of the rose enthusiasts. Wilhelmshöhe Park being an historic edifice should retain and maintain its appropriate style. The design of the “English” garden was subject to strict stylistic rules. In the eighteenth century one had the possibility with the help of troops, the compulsory use of labourers and of horse drawn carts to move nowadays hardly imaginable amounts of earth and to plant groups of trees in order to create the garden areas conforming to the stylistic ideas of the time. In addition trick fountains were built to capture the beauty of nature in a confined space together with a seemingly romantic architecture. The garden spaces with their manifold dendrological botanical populations were meant to captivate the visitor with continually changing perspectives and vistas. Roses were originally not part of this stylistic concept in English ideals of landscape gardening. They did, however, constitute a verifiably distinguishing feature of the park in Wilhelmshöhe. The creation of an English landscape park was achieved by using the Weissenstein-Wilhelmshöhe landscapes and the previous baroque layout so successfully that a present day visitor does not think of the park landscape as being artificially modified.
The state administration which was charged with maintaining this original historical cultural heritage was at first sceptical. However, it was possible with the help of of historical documentation to convince those responsible of the importance of roses in the dendrological populations of the landscape parks Weissenstein-Wilhelmshöhe which was quite unique in the architecture of English landscape gardening. In order to reach an agreement about the form of such an endeavour Cassel’s circle of friends from the Association of German Rose Enthusiasts had to found a club, the Rose Society of Wilhelmshöhe Park’s Island of Roses, to be the contracting party with with the state administration in 1977. It was agreed in this contract that the society’s members were allowed to plant bush roses in areas designated by the state administration on the “Island of Roses” and round about it “in terms of the project and in the style of the garden”. The result should not be a rosarium or an enclosed rose garden but the roses themselves should fit into the inimitable character of the park’s landscape like the collections of roses in the eighteenth century. Together with the garden administration and its director, Hermann Mielke, a planting plan was mapped out. In the spring of 1978 the society’s members planted the first roses.
Up until 1989 1,600 bush roses had been planted from more than 900 species and varieties. The roses were distributed in the landscape gardens designated around the “Island of Roses” and formed 18 areals. The habitats by ponds and flowing waters mostly with trees exerting their influence from above and below and very different soil conditions have not really proved to be that favourable to roses. Nevertheless, the roses have adapted themselves to the landscape extremely well.
All in all superb collections have been created of European,Asian and American wild roses with their hybrids. There are also numerous examples of the “Pimpinellifolien” roses and the “Burnet” garden roses which were developed from them; the “Spring roses” cultivated by Kordes; the R.rubiginosa- and the R.rugosa-Hybrids; the old garden roses and the perennial Lambertiana roses. The roses developed by the Austro-Hungarian Rudolf Geschwind are also collected.
The club also produced a booklet (a guide to the roses) about the history, phytology and an inventory of the roses planted. The fourth edition was published in 1996
The club’s members are striving with the support of the Administration of the State Palaces and Gardens in Hesse (since 2007 the ”Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel) and its regional administration for gardens to continue to maintain and to care for the present collection of roses from all over Europe.