A wedding present for the ages

Published on 12 May 2025

The Portland Botanic Gardens can fairly be described as one of the jewels in the city’s crown, and a recent donation has added a bit more sparkle – not to mention a lot more colour.

Treloar Roses, the Bolwarra-based business which is Australia’s largest rose grower, has donated about 100 roses to the Botanic Gardens, a gift which will supercharge plans to develop the rose displays.

The roses, which are largely pink or lighter colours, will provide a spectacular backdrop for an area already popular for wedding photography and which is undergoing an overhaul, with a new arbour planned.

The donation followed thefts from the rose garden last year then vandalism of the greenhouse and the prized dahlias earlier this year.

Those setbacks promised to further delay the plans for the rose garden, until Treloar Roses stepped up to the plate.

Treloar Roses co-director Elton Treloar said office manager Kate Treloar suggested the donation after hearing about the vandalism.

“We had these (surplus) roses sitting in our greenhouse and this was a much better use for them,” Mr Treloar said.

“Donating them was a win-win, it’s great that they’re able to be used (at the Botanic Garden).

“Showing off these roses is very important to us as well and it’s good to have fresh stock in here because after 20-30 years roses will become a bit tired.”

That was echoed by Council Senior Horticulturalist Adam May, who thanked Treloar Roses for the donation and said it also enabled ratepayers’ funds to be spent on much-needed infrastructure in the gardens rather than replacing stock.

“It’s a huge boon for us,” he said.

“The amount of planning that goes into a garden like this is staggering.

“The colours are great – we wanted to create some bulk colour palettes with this area becoming a bit of a feature and the donation just fell in well with our plans.

“We would’ve been two years behind with our plans after the thefts and vandalism but now we’re probably a year ahead.

“We can put the money into infrastructure instead so rather than manual watering we can go fully automated.

“It will look really stunning and next year’s display should be spectacular.”

Caption: Treloar Roses co-director Elton Treloar and Glenelg Shire Council Senior Horticulturalist Adam May with a couple of the about 100 donated rose plants the Bolwarra rose grower donated to the Portland Botanic Garden.