(Sara Brown for Boston.com)
Fenway resident Joe Bergeron tends to roses at the Kelleher Rose Garden. He is one of the volunteers who regularly tends the garden.
After a car accident crushed his leg a few years ago, it took Joe Bergeron a year to be able to walk from his Fenway apartment to the Kelleher Rose Garden. Often, he said, he would have to stop to rest every few blocks.
But during his recovery, he would make it to the rose garden every day, he said, to enjoy the blooming roses. He would also notice groups of volunteers coming weekly to take care of the nearly 1,500 plants that populate the garden.
"I thought, when I got better, I'd come over and help out," he said on a recent Tuesday, sitting on a stool as he raked weeds from the garden's flower beds.
Bergeron is one of about 1,000 volunteers who come out every summer to take care of this rose garden, an oasis nestled in the middle of the Back Bay Fens. Volunteers help maintain the flowers in the garden that landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff planned in the 1930s.
In the 1980s, the garden fell into disrepair, said Catherine Pedemonti, the garden's project manager. The Emerald Necklace Conservancy and the Boston Parks and Recreation Department teamed up to create a master plan for restoring the garden with new turf and a new irrigation system, soil rejuvenation, and new signs.
And every week, volunteers come to Tuesdays with Roses, where first-time gardeners and regulars alike remove dead buds from the plants (a process called dead-heading) and weed the flower beds, gaining garden skills along with an appreciation for -- and some said, an awareness of -- the garden.
"I didn't even realize it was here," Back Bay resident Aline Rodrigues said of the garden as she maintained a Chihuly rose.
Rodrigues was one of the volunteers who to the garden Tuesday with the volunteer group Boston Cares. "It's summer," she said. "It's not like I have my own yard...It's kind of nice to just get out."
"So you are going to need pruners and a pair of gloves," Pedemonti told new volunteers. Groups also grabbed large paper bags for the discarded greenery, which will later be composted.
Then it was time for Rose Care 101, as Pedemonti demonstrated how to properly cut a dead bloom off a plant, focusing on where to cut and how to cut (at a 45 degree angle, to avoid fungus). Deadheading the roses spares the plant from expending energy to remove the dead bloom itself through natural processes.
After a demonstration, Pedemonti called for volunteers to demonstrate the technique. Afterward, the new gardeners, armed with pruners, spread out around the garden, looking for plants in need of some TLC.