Roses at Rest-Stop-Ranch
The garden built for caregivers and the people they care for includes over 100 varieties of roses.
Sam Sherman | Rest-Stop-Ranch Programs Coordinator
July 2026
Rest-Stop-Ranch in Topsfield, Massachusetts, is an inclusive nature sanctuary built for caregivers and the people they are caring for. The property offers a half mile of paved, Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant pathways that wind through the gardens and lead to a patio overlooking a lily pond. Benches and seating areas are scattered throughout, including a few tables where guests can bring a picnic. The atmosphere is quiet and peaceful, and the scent of blooms hangs in the air. It is a spot that provides a unique respite for all visitors.
Through the spring and summer, monthly festivals showcase the different flowers that are at their peak. June features the Rose Rodeo (“a place where every nose may smell a rose”). A tour guide shares information on—and sometimes stories about—the plants in the collection, which includes over 100 different varieties. Plantings are positioned so they can be appreciated both by walking visitors and those who use wheelchairs.
The arrangement and care of the plants has been thoughtfully considered. For example, a koi pond serves as the centerpiece of a small area that features ten different rose varieties, including examples of drifts, a David Austin, and an Andy Vanable, so that even guests with limited mobility can get a satisfying sampling without walking very far. Those who are able can move on to four additional areas (Cut Flowers, Kitchen Garden trellis, Orchard Avenue, and Ornamental Shrubs). The whole Rose Rodeo tour is compactly arranged in about a tenth of a mile on the sunniest spots of the property.
Clockwise from top left: Kitchen Garden trellis, minis in the Kitchen Garden, Orchard Ave. area. Photos courtesy of Rest-Stop-Ranch.
A blooming relationship with NERS
Rest-Stop-Ranch Director Mary E. MacDonald planted the first roses of the collection in memory of her mother, Margaret MacDonald, whose end-of-life journey inspired Mary and her spouse, Karl Ackerman, to establish Rest-Stop-Ranch. One of her mother’s friends gave a gift in Margaret’s memory for the purchase of those first roses.
Once she bought them, however, Mary realized how little she knew about planting and caring for them. With the new plants still in the back of her pickup truck, she drove to a The New England Rose Society’s annual showrose show at the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill Tower Hill Botanic Garden, said, “Please help! I’m new and I don’t know anything,” and found herself with immediate support from the society NERS. A consulting rosarian arrived at Rest-Stop-Ranch a couple of days later to help plant and care for them.
In the years after the first roses went in, Master Rosarian David Cannistraro, owner of Just Roses, and a group of volunteers from NERS visited the property for April pruning and to plant additional roses in order to expand the collection. Jean DiVincenzo, a professional garden-keeper from the NERS group, also volunteered once -a -month for several years, devoting hundreds of hours to nurturing the plants.
During this time, Karl developed and built the brick pathways that enable all visitors to have a close-up experience of the plantings, and the rose collection followed the paths.
The trellises around the Kitchen Garden are home to climbers like Generous Gardener. The Kitchen Garden itself has a new collection of minis, such as Winsome and Chickadee. The dozen varieties growing along the path including Cut Flowers includes Rosa Rugosa, Campfire, and Sentimental. These bushes are attention grabbing, not only for their colors and scents, but also because many of them have been allowed to grow tall.
As June 2026 came to a close Mary served as a pre-apprentice judge at the 2026 NERS Rose Show in an early step to becoming an ARS-accredited horticultural judge. She considers this a way to give back to the NERS for all the support that it has provided Rest-Stop-Ranch over the years. Mary received early mentoring and support for the accessible collection (in addition to those previously mentioned) from Andy Vanable, Teresa Mosher, Jeanette Danehy, Barbara LeDuc, Maria Connell, Victoria Palmer-Erbs, and Chu Jung.
Left to Right: Pink Drift rose in the Koi Pond area, Rose label. Photos courtesy of Rest-Stop-Ranch.
The visitor experience
The approach to pruning at Rest-Stop-Ranch is a bit different for a reason. In the spring, dead, diseased, or damaged canes are removed, but otherwise the bushes are not cut back. This results in bushes that produce blossoms at varying heights, allowing easy access to the fragrant flowers for people who, on foot or in a wheelchair, are taller, shorter, or in-between.
In addition to the roses, the gardens along the paths feature a large collection of lilacs (60+ varieties), flowering bulbs bulb flowers, and fruit trees. Rest-Stop-Ranch is an accredited Level 1 arboretum, meaning the gardens are managed by volunteers, and have at least twenty-five labeled species of trees, shrubs, or woody vines. A rose by the Koi Pond is marked number one for the arboretum collection, it also has a sign to indicate, “Rose Tour Starts Here!” to draw visitors in.
The gardens provide a peaceful setting for additional programs, such as the monthly Memory Café, which offers an informal gathering for individuals living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias, brain injuries, or Down Syndrome with memory changes, along with their family or professional care partners. Rest-Stop-Ranch’s program, established in 2015, is recognized as the first outdoor memory café in the United States.
Open garden hours are offered most weeks, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1 p.m. – 4 p.m., and on second Sundays, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Visitors reserve ahead the opportunity to meander through the gardens on their own. Groups may reserve part of all of the garden area or the cottage for private outings.
Clockwise from top left: Koi Pond area, Ornamental Shrubs area, Cut Flowers area. Photos courtesy of Rest-Stop-Ranch.
How to get involved
For those interested in getting involved at Rest-Stop-Ranch, there are a number of opportunities for rose enthusiasts who live in the North Shore area. Volunteers may join a team working in the gardens one morning a week or serve as a docent once or twice a week to guide the Rose Rodeo tour through mid-November. The rose curator position is a seasonal job, March to– November, that helps weed, fertilize and prune, as well as inventory and document the rose collection. To learn more about these opportunities or to support the work of Rest-Stop-Ranch, visit https://rest-stop-ranch.org/support-us/.