For those who appreciate flowers and those who love natural beauty, few highways can surpass the beautiful Ten Mile Rose Garden of Southeastern Missouri.
Here—blooming in a stretch along a highway between Jackson and Cape Girardeau in the historic Mississippi river area—are ten miles of shrub and hedge roses.
They are so well-developed and beautiful that an annual pilgrimage is made by tourists and flower lovers throughout the nation to visit this scenic spot.
It is about 75 miles southeast of St. Louis, near the colorful and historic Mississippi-Ohio River delta.
There are 26 major rose groupings; some have several hundred blooming plants each. In addition, occasional rose fences are planted with a background of evergreen trees and shrubs.
Ten Mile Rose Garden
This garden started in 1935 and has become more beautiful each year. District highway employees and many residents devote much of their time each fall and spring to work on the garden.
Thousands of dollars have been spent on this beautification program and residents’ equally gorgeous rose gardens.
In the total highway plantings are 9,000 rose plants in groupings of 500 or fewer; 1,317 plantings of pines, cedars, and other evergreens; and more than 14,000 other plantings, including native trees, dogwoods, and redbuds. In addition, there are more than 50 kinds of wildflowers.
There is no single organized committee to handle this project. Instead, each year money is contributed by local citizens, civic groups, nine garden clubs, Scout packs, and sometimes tourists to improve the garden.
Cape Rock Drive
Extensive flower plantings do not end at the terminal of Ten Mile Drive. Cape Rock Drive, an eight-mile city boulevard encircling colorful Cape Girardeau, winds through rolling terrain to Cape Rock, where American civilization is west of the. Mississippi began in the early 1700s. Cape Girardeau itself is a vast garden of roses.
Organizations and businessmen are systematically planting Cape Rock Drive with large rose groupings, flowering crabs, althaea, spiraea, beauty bush, sumac, sassafras, deciduous holly, dogwood, redbud, pines, and spruce. Today it probably outshines the Ten Mile Garden.
Nature Laboratory
The area newspaper, The Southeast Missourian, some years ago began a development called a “Nature Laboratory.” This is a ten-acre woodland hillside overlooking the Ten Mile Rose Garden.
Here the roses and other flowers and trees which are used in the highway garden and Cape Rock Drive are tested, along with unusual species from all parts of the world. Visitors are welcome in this test garden.
Rose Display Garden
An official rose display garden of more than 200 All-America rose varieties is in Capaha Park, one of nine parks in the Cape Girardeau system. This test garden is maintained primarily as a civic project by nine garden clubs.
44659 by Leslie G. Kennon