Mother’s day just passed, so it’s likely you’ve had a lot of roses in your life lately. If you can’t get enough of the flowers, though, you need to check out Osage Station Park in Danville, a community park in the deep East Bay.
At first glance, Osage Station park is fairly unassuming. It’s the kind of sprawling community park with walking paths, a playground, little league fields, and rentable picnic areas that draw young families from the city to the ‘burbs. But Osage Station Park has an unexpected feature that remains hidden through much of the year: some of the best rose gardens in the Bay Area.
Osage Stations’ rose garden was originally launched in 1984. It began with just a few bushes planted as a memorial. Today it’s grown and blossomed (sorry) into a massive garden that features over 1,500 rose bushes, including nearly 100 bushes honoring military veterans.
The garden is a labor of love, maintained by the local Diablo Women’s Garden Club, Alamo-Danville Newcomers club, and the City of Danville. The city does much of the basic work of keeping the garden growing, but volunteers come out weekly to help maintain the bushes, prune them, and otherwise keep them thriving.
Osage Station’s roses are concentrated in three main areas around the park. One is along fences by the park’s little league baseball fields, the other is to the right of the park’s large playground, and the third (and most dramatic) is towards the back of the park, by the adjacent middle school. The roses are reportedly relatively environmentally friendly, requiring only 6 minutes of watering a few times per week during the dry season.
You can reach all the park’s rose gardens on a single, paved loop trail that begins near the main parking lot and completes a 3/4 mile loop around Osage Station Park. It’s paved, wheelchair and stroller accessible, and on-leash dog friendly, making it a great place for a casual afternoon walk. In addition to the formal rose gardens, the fences by the path are covered in climbing roses, which are among the first bushes to bloom each season.
Osage Station Park’s roses will be out all Summer, but the first blooms of the season are some of the most dramatic. Outside the blooming season, you’d barely know the gardens are there. The park’s roses are in full bloom right now, and it’s an ideal time to visit. Osage Station Park is free, making it a great place for a weekend walk. Grab a picnic from Sideboard or a pizza from Locanda Ravello in downtown Danville, and head to the park for a stroll, a snack, and some meditative time literally stopping to smell the roses.
Osage Station Park is located at 816 Brookside Drive in Danville. Park in the free lot off Brookside drive and walk past the playground or picnic areas to reach the loop trail.
