Welcome
Freedom Gardens
Open Garden Days
Sundays in June
1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 June 2025
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
BLOOM UPDATE
19 June 2025
Thank you to everyone who visited last Sunday on a beautiful late spring day. It was great to welcome rose lovers from Illinois, New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as from all around Ohio. A big thanks to Victoria from Chicago for being both last Sunday’s most intrepid rosarian and for improving our Rose Trade Deficit situation by bringing roses as well as taking some away! And it was great to see rosarians who were here on Weeks 1 or 2 returning to see all that had opened since their previous visit.
Most remarked-upon roses included Hart Crane, Schon Ingeborg, Duchesse de Montebello, Fragezeichen, “Ralph’s Old Garden Rose,” Ernst G Dorell, Snowbelt, Como Park, Party Hardy, Velvet Fragrance, Simon Robinson, Walsh’s Jubilee (with the Jubilee from Russia looking good too), Morning Blush, Porcelaine de Chine and Mrs Keays’ Snow Bush entwined with Graham Thomas lonicera.
This week the roses will be approaching peak bloom, with many more varieties in bloom than any previous week. Most of the historic once-blooming Old Garden roses–albas, gallicas, and damasks--will still have blossoms and most modern roses will have at least their first flowers. The newest Kordes roses from Germany and many of the David Austin roses may not be at their best until next week.
Rick, our Welcome Ambassador, is enjoying a vacation with his family this week. So if you pull into our driveway and spot a friendly person in a Hawaiian shirt, they may not have any particular insights about parking. Please help us and everyone else by parking logically.
If you are in a car, please proceed down the driveway and take the marked left turn for parking in the front yard. If you are in a truck, heavy SUV, camper, or military-style vehicle, please remain on the driveway and park along the right side of the driveway in front of the portable toilet, or in front of the garage. Please do your best to leave parking room for those arriving after you.
However you arrive, we look forward to welcoming you on Sunday!
Everyone is invited to Freedom Gardens' 27th Annual Open Gardens, Sundays 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 June, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, at the homestead of Susan and Peter Schneider, 6193 Vair Road, Freedom Township, Portage County, Ohio.
Our collection of over 1300 different roses features newer and hard-to-find hybrid teas, floribundas, climbers and shrubs from the European nurseries, and heritage roses imported from Andre Eve in France, Peter Beales in England, and Martin Weingart, the nurseryman near the Sangerhausen Rosarium in Germany. Many of these roses cannot be seen anywhere else between Europe and California.
All of our roses are grown without winter protection, which provides an excellent opportaunity to see exactly which varieties are winter hardy in northern Ohio.
We grow nearly complete collections of Paul Jerabek's Ohio-bred creations and the Canadian Explorer roses, and have more than 110 different cultivars of David Austin's English roses. Rudolph Geschwind was the greatest rose hybridizer ever produced by the Austro-Hungarian empire, and we have a lot of his roses too. If you want to see the new disease-proof and often fragrant roses from Germany, we grow the full range here. We've rescued dozens of heirloom roses from the much lamented and now destroyed Gardens of Roses of Legend and Romance at Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, Ohio. Freedom Gardens now has what may be America's largest collection of hybrid perpetuals, the voluptuous, fragrant roses which defined the Victorian era. Our rose garden has been featured in Horticulture and Ohio magazines, and its story is told in Peter Schneider's most recent book, Right Rose, Right Place, which Peter will of course be happy to sign during your visit.
We also have a growing collection of noteworthy trees (including mature specimens of Acer maximowiczii and Rehder wingnut), an orchard, lily ponds, vegetables and berries grown the No Dig way, a new hosta garden (please direct all hosta questions to Susan!), many other plants and a multitude of song birds, frogs, dragonflies and newts situated on a bucolic eight-acre setting.
An interesting selection of winter-hardy potted roses, all propagated at Freedom Gardens, will be offered for sale. Regular visitors know that we always have a selection of highly sought-after roses not listed on the webpage, as well as specials offered only to in-person visitors. We continue to offer a selection of rare and choice lilacs propagated from our collection of nearly 100 correctly named cultivars.
We'll be open rain or shine (no rain dates). There will be a portable toilet on site. Children and picnickers are welcome. Please do not smoke in our garden. There is no admission charge and no need to make a reservation.
We look forward to welcoming lots of rose friends every Sunday in June!
The map below is more useful than these things used to be, but still not perfect. Main thing: from State Route 88 take King Road south until it ends at Vair Road. Turn left, and we are 1000' (and fourth driveway) on your left.
BRIDGE OUT
Visitors from the Northeast (Ashtabula/Erie/Buffalo) will find that the State Route 88 bridge over the Ohio Turnpike is being replaced. To save time, please ignore the state's detour signs directing you to other state routes, and take a much shorter detour via either Slagle or Anderson Roads. Google Maps is aware of both of these options and will usually direct you to one or the other.
[There is indeed a "Ravenna Arsenal Street" but we as civilians have no access to it.]
Important note: These are the only days on which our garden is open without an appointment.