Rose enthusiasts and avid gardeners will join nursery industry experts and University of California researchers on Friday, April 30, at the University of California, Davis, for the campus’s third annual Rose Day. A rose sale, open to the public, will take place that afternoon and again on May 1.

Only a few seats remain for the Friday Rose Day workshops, but attendance at the public rose sale on Friday from 4:15  p.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.is unlimited. Both days of the rose event will be held at Foundation Plant Services, west of the main campus, and will feature best management practices for establishing and caring for roses.

Workshop topics will include rose propagation, pruning, budding and grafting, and pest identification and management. The $45 registration includes lunch and a tour of the university’s eight-acre rose garden and the new All-America Rose Selections garden testing site.

“We’re excited about this popular workshop’s new hands-on format,” said Melissa Borel, program representative with the California Center for Urban Horticulture. “Whether you’re new to roses or a seasoned veteran, we’re sure you’ll gain something interesting from the workshop to apply in your own home garden.”

Rose Day is part of the center’s “Your Sustainable Backyard” series of educational events, designed to deliver knowledge to master gardeners, rosarians and others who can share the information with the gardening public. Sustainable gardening focuses on accurate pest identification, least toxic methods of pest control, water-conserving strategies and effective cultural practices for minimizing diseases.

Available for sale will be All-America Rose Selection winners, rose varieties to be released in 2011 and classic rose varieties. The roses are made available through donations from Jackson & Perkins Roses, Weeks Roses, Meilland Star Roses and Greenheart Farms. The plants, grown at Foundation Plant Services, are all clean, disease-tested stock.

Rose Day is presented by the California Center for Urban Horticulture, Master Gardener program, Foundation Plant Services, and the Garden Rose Council. For more information, contact the websites of the California Center for Urban Horticulture at http://ccuh.ucdavis.edu and Foundation Plant Services at http://fpms.ucdavis.edu. The complete agenda for the day is available at: http://ccuh.ucdavis.edu/events/.

About UC Davis

For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000 students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.