Riotous rose garden is a gift to Sonoma neighborhood

Oct 26, 2023

Many people keep their roses to themselves.

True, they may sport a few in front to add to the curb appeal of their homes. But the serious collections are hidden behind walls and fences.

Not so with a certain cottage tucked in a settled subdivision on the edge of Sonoma.

When they moved up from San Diego seven years ago, Robert Pique and Glenn Arsenault ripped out their scraggly front lawn and replaced it with roses — a gobsmacking extravagance of roses, billows and pillows of densely packed pink-and-white iceberg roses with plumes of gold shooting up from the froth of color. When unsuspecting passersby come upon it, they may have to pause to catch their breath. And right now, in June, beware. The spectacle is at its peak.

A new bridge over nearby Fryer Creek has brought more people strolling through the neighborhood, and they never fail to exclaim over "the rose cottage" that stands out in an area of many pretty cottage gardens.

"Our friends and neighbors keep saying that the garden should be in a magazine," Pique said, laughing. He planted the rose garden not to show off but to give something back to his new community of Sonoma where, he said, he and Arsenault have been warmly welcomed.

"My friend always said it's good to have a gift for the street and not to put everything in your backyard. That's our gift for the street and for us," Pique said. "So it was fun."

He and Arsenault did far more than the minimum.

They put in symmetrical terraced boxes as planters to contain the roses and selected just three varieties to repeat en masse to evoke a fountain of roses. The iceberg roses are set off by the tall grandiflora ‘Strike It Rich’ variety with its radiant yellow-orange, almost-golden blooms set off by dark green leaves.

Rather than using boxwood for a more formal French design, they lined the plantings with gently flowing and fragrant star jasmine.

"We have the jasmine, which has a looser feel. We both went to Giverny, where the flowers just grow over the gravel paths," Pique said, referencing the famed French garden of the impressionist painter Claude Monet.

The otherwise contemporary house was given a French cottage feel with a coat of white paint and periwinkle blue shutters. They installed European-style flower boxes on the dormer windows and filled them with pink-and-white geraniums. (Don't tell, but the flowers in the treacherously placed upper dormer are artificial, for practical purposes.)

One of the first things they tackled in their landscape makeover was to remove the front and back lawns and add water-permeable surfaces, for which they received rebates from the city of Sonoma.

However, there were about a half-dozen hybrid tea roses already planted along the driveway such as a deep red ‘Mr. Lincoln’ and ‘Perfume Delight,’ an All-America Rose Selection winner from 40 years ago with solitary deep pink blooms. Those leftovers from the old landscape inspired them to make roses their dominant theme.

Pique, who grew up in Rancho Palos Verdes south of Los Angeles, also fondly associates roses with his mother.

"Where I grew up, my mother had a circular driveway and had rose bushes all along the inside. So it's sort of a family thing for me, with roses and my mother," he said.

Pique and Arsenault created their own secret garden in the back, designed like a classic French garden complete with a potager of raised beds, peach trees, hydrangeas and an Eden rose climbing up the back wall. This is their special place, where they like to read and spend time talking or socializing with friends.

"We wanted to have a quiet, peaceful, private outdoor space," said Arsenault, who worked in real estate before retiring to Sonoma. To enjoy on days when it's too cold or too wet to be outside, they added a solarium that extends out into the garden, allowing them to feel like they’re outside even in a storm.

Pique said the lush cottage garden survived the past stress of the drought thanks to drip irrigation and that everything was well-established before the dry years hit. There also seems to be a rich reservoir of groundwater, he added.

"It really doesn't require an inordinate amount of water," Pique said. The garden has done OK even with water cutbacks of recent years.

Roses can be surprisingly resilient, many surviving despite neglect, for years.

But Pique and Arsenault have developed a system to deliver just the right amount of love to their roses without allowing them to run their lives. Pique does the heavy pruning, cutting way back in the winter, and feeding the roses. Arsenault does the daily tidying up of grooming and deadheading to keep the bloom going for months.

Pique said some of his roses are still going well into December.

"If we had bought our house during the drought, we would have put in what our neighbors have done, with natives and grasses, and eventually that becomes a very fun, very beautiful garden," he said. "For some reason, that wasn't what we were into at the time. But we’ve talked about it. If things change, we’ll shift it out."

For the time being, however, they’re confirmed rose men, happy to put on their annual show for the neighborhood — and themselves.

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or [email protected]. OnTwitter @megmcconahey.

Features, The Press Democrat

Like most everyone, I love a good feature story that takes me somewhere I’ve never been or tells me something I don't know. Where can I take you? Who in Sonoma County would you like to know better? I cover the people, places and ideas that make up Sonoma County, with general features, people profiles and home and garden, interior design and architecture stories. Hit me up with your tips, ideas and burning questions.