Ladd Circle Park & Rose Gardens — Attraction in Portland

This is my favorite place in the city. A park in the center of the neighborhood, with four beautiful rose gardens surrounding it, each a few blocks away from the center park.

The rose gardens are beautiful. Each garden has benches in the center that are surrounded by roses growing on a trellis. It's usually very quiet, and it's not uncommon to have the entire park to yourself. When the roses are in full bloom, sometimes they are over your head, and you can get lost in the wonderland like maze, taking in the beautiful colors and scents. My favorite garden is the West garden. It has a nice layout and in my opinion the most beautiful and best smelling flowers. my favorite is the Lemon Spice. it smells like lemons in a freshly cleaned house on a hazy sunday morning in the spring.

If you're feeling like a walk, I'd recommend walking from garden to garden along the mile long octagon that connects them. You can see the beautiful houses, front yard gardens, and trees in this beautiful neighborhood. I highly recommend doing this walk in the spring, but it's enchanting any time of the year.

When you're done with the walk, you can grab some coffee in the coffee house that is next to...

How can you not love this place. You can smell the roses blocks away. These days most stores you go in, except very expensive places, even then you run into rose cloning. To preserve the rose from picking time, and to enhance different colors in roses sold in most all grocery stores. Unfortunately doing all that ends up taking the smell out of the rose. May look great but I have always seen roses beauty in the smell. Most anyone can pick out the smell of roses blindfolded. Ladd's smells so good because the roses have been growing without anything but nature and good soil. It's Oregon,...

Walking the Ladd Addition is a fun outing for the shady streets and diverse architecture with the rose gardens a nice bonus. They’re a reasonable substitute for the Washington Park Rose Test Gardens (worth the visit if you’re on the west side) without having to cross the Willamette. Imagine a wheel with the Ladd Circle as the hub: there are 4 rose gardens symmetrically placed like bangles on the spokes (streets) projecting out from the hub. Walk the neighborhood and find the gardens— or get lost! Either way it’s...