by Carrie Frye – Staff Writer

Bill Shore pruning in the Weymouth Center rose garden.

Although growing roses might be considered to be a contrary undertaking, it’s hard to deny the sheer beauty that lies in a single flower. Each rose with its color bears a meaning and with its fragrance can touch the senses and grow into our memories. Blooming splendor can only describe the Weymouth Center’s rose gardens as peak season came into its glory this spring. Bill Shore, 86, a long-time resident of Southern Pines, is known simply as “The Rose Man.” The sight and sweet smell of the garden explains his blooming title completely. As one of the Weymouth Center Dirt Gardeners, twice a week, Shore and a handful of dedicated volunteers tend to the roses.

“When I moved here in 1956, the only rose plants came dipped in wax and were shipped out to a “5 & 10” store or a feed store. That was the first kind I ever planted,” says Shore reminiscently.

In khaki pants, a green polo shirt and a leather pouch holding his pruning shears around his waist, Shore made his way into the gardens to continue a lifetime’s labor of rose love that began for Weymouth eight years ago. Shore received a phone call asking him to come and try to revitalize the original rose garden. This was a tall task considering the shape the garden was in, but nonetheless, Shore was up to the challenge.

“What was here was basically dead,” he says. “So I ordered 25 of my favorites, hybrid teas and floras, and over time was able to rejuvenate the original garden.”

Shore was then asked about starting a new garden on the Weymouth property. Knowing that the hybrid teas he had planted in the original garden require daily care for optimal growth and blooms, he began researching low maintenance, disease resistant roses for the new garden. An article in American Rose on Earth-Kind roses, roses that require little to no care, caught his attention.

Shore contacted the Texas A&M University Agricultural Department to learn more about these new Earth-Kind roses. Excited about the potential of Weymouth, the group offered to make Weymouth a research garden, but Shore wanted the new garden to have a purpose for the visitors of Weymouth Center so they might see how roses can and should look and that they too can easily grow roses themselves. So he continued his quest for disease resistant roses only to find Dr. Griffith Buck of Iowa State University’s hybridized roses.

Teresa Hessler does her rose work as a Dirt Gardener on Tuesday mornings.

In early 2007, Shore went before the board of directors at Weymouth Center with a sketch, cost figures and asked for the front area to the left of the main entrance for its direct sunlight for a new rose garden. With the board’s blessing, the land was cleared, and he was able to lay out a couple rows of flower beds for the spring planting season.

“I ordered 60 total plants that included the Griffith Buck roses, Earth-Kind roses from Tyler, Texas and Knock Out roses. The next year, we added another bed. And now there is 160 total bushes,” says Shore.

Shore even got creative with the rose beds by creating a circle with two outer sides that surround a statuary called “Trumpeters” by artist William Duffy that was donated to Weymouth Center by Dr. and Mrs. Robert Wetmore.

The 'Trumpeters' statuary is surrounding by blooming bushes in the Weymouth Center front rose garden.

Shore and his fellow Dirt Gardeners come weekly to care for the garden. Teresa Hessler, 60, of Seven Lakes works every Tuesday with Shore in the front rose garden.

“It means a lot to be able to come here. I love roses. They are very rewarding,” she says joking that her favorite is any one that blooms.

Larry Cohen, 67, of Pinehurst, has worked with Shore for the past five years.

“It is a lovely place to be, but it has to be maintained, otherwise it will disappear,” says Cohen, who describes the garden work as a way to give back to the community.

And maintenance seems to be the key to growing roses that is paying off in blooms this year for Shore and the rest of Dirt Gardeners.

“I received all my knowledge of roses from Bill, what the roses require, how much sunlight and irrigation,” says Don Baker, 68, of Southern Pines. “I can’t grow roses at home because of too much shade, so I have to come here, the whole three blocks from home,” he laughs.

All of the Dirt Gardeners will be busily working on the property’s gardens and grounds in preparation for the June 12 Weymouth Tour of Gardens. Otherwise, just look for “The Rose Man” in the rose garden with his pruning shears in hand on Tuesdays and Fridays.