About Us

In the early 1900s, Riverside County was in the heart of one of the largest and finest commercial rose-growing areas in the country. In 1948, the Southern California Rose Grower’s Association began holding an annual competition at the Mission Inn in Riverside entitled “Fashions in Roses”. The event was attended each year by thousands of rose enthusiasts, yet Riverside had no rose society. Mrs. Don (Zelda) Lloyd, a resident of Riverside, first conceived the idea of forming a rose society while helping at the rose growers’ ninth annual show in the fall of 1957. It was there, while observing the community’s continued enthusiasm and interest in the show that Mrs. Lloyd decided that the time might be right for starting a rose society in Riverside.

Consequently, on February 5, 1958, a meeting was held at the Riverside Chamber of Commerce to learn if there was sufficient interest in forming a local affiliate of the American Rose Society. Present were Mrs. Helen Carswell, then-Director of the Pacific Southwest District for the American Rose Society, Mrs. Lloyd, and twenty-one others, who collectively formed the “Riverside Rose Society”. One month later, on March 5, 1958, the first official meeting of the new Riverside Rose Society was held at the Riverside Chamber of Commerce. Mrs. Lloyd was elected the Society’s first president. Charter members numbered seventy-five, with six honorary members. The Riverside Rose Society was the only rose society that existed at the time in the entire area between Pasadena and San Diego, and is therefore the third oldest rose society in southern California.

Later that same year – and for several decades thereafter – the Riverside Rose Society hosted its own ARS-sanctioned rose show. It also participated in the Riverside Flower Show, sponsoring the Rose Division of that show. Sadly, in 1994, the remarkable woman who founded the Riverside Rose Society, Zelda Lloyd, passed away, and the following year, the Society hosted its last rose show in her memory. In 2005, however, after a ten year lapse, the Society resumed this activity while continuing to remain involved with the Riverside Flower Show. This year represents the forty-first time that the Society will host its own rose show. The event, entitled “Riverside Rose Society’s Golden Oldies Rose Show”, will be held on Saturday, May 10, 2008 in the “Music Room” of the Mission Inn, as the finale to a week of events from May 4 – 10th in celebration of the Society’s 50th Anniversary. The week commemorating this milestone in the Society’s history is called, appropriately, “Riverside Rose Society Week…Fifty Golden Years of Roses”, and the public is encouraged to attend one or more of these events.

The Riverside Rose Society, a California non-profit, for public benefit corporation, is affiliated with the American Rose Society, also a non-profit, educational organization. This parent organization provides information and various kinds of educational aids to all rose societies and their members on a national level. Although the main objective of RRS is to broaden the field of study and appreciation of roses, and to teach its members and the public how to select, grow, groom and exhibit roses, the organization is also dedicated to civic projects, such as founding The Rose Garden at Fairmount Park, participating in rose projects at the Riverside Public Library, Riverside Municipal Airport and The Rose Garden Village on Adams Street. The Society has also donated gifts of roses to other local beautification projects and currently holds pruning demonstrations each January at several locations in the area. In addition, in 2006, the Society launched a humanitarian project utilizing roses to ease the suffering of fellow Americans in the Gulf Coast who lost their homes and gardens to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The project, headed by RRS member Lee Stevens, is in its third year, and to date, nearly 3,000 roses and over 20,000 letters and cards of encouragement have been shipped to people in the affected region, with the Riverside Rose Society having the distinction of being the only rose society in the United States to launch and maintain such a project. Founder Zelda Lloyd would indeed be proud.

The President of the Riverside Rose Society, Bonnie Brokaw, and its members, cordially invite all visitors and newcomers to join them at their meetings which consist of an educational program followed by refreshments. The meetings are held the first Tuesday of each month at 7:30 P.M. in the Conference Room of the Botanic Gardens on the campus of the University of California, Riverside. During the summer months, potlucks are held at members’ homes, and in December the group gets together for its annual Christmas Party and Installation of Officers at an area banquet facility or a member’s home, to which everyone is encouraged to bring guests.

Be sure to check out the Society’s website at RiversideRose.org. Happy rose growing to you!

“The Riverside Rose Society…where roses and people have been blooming for fifty glorious years.”