Sahime, the perfect edible rose that was born in the Okuizumo Rose Garden.
In 2005, the Fukuma family cultivated and opened the Okuizumo Rose Garden in the beautiful land of Shimane prefecture. With a tremendous passion to produce the highest-quality, organic edible roses, and with dedicated research and trial & errors for over a decade, founder Atsushi Fukuma successfully developed their unique rose cultivar named Sahime. This rose exhibits more floral notes and a fruity-sweet aroma, and its deep red petals contain more anthocyanin and polyphenol compared to other cultivars of rose. The Sahime immediately spread all over Japan and its products, such as dried petals, syrup and tea, are currently distributed to restaurants, bars, hotels, food manufacturers, distillers and cosmetics manufacturers throughout the country. Fertilizers used in the pesticide-free field are bark compost produced at their own farm.
Roses were commonly used in Shimane as medicine.
Humans across the world have loved roses since the ancient age, and Japan’s residents were no different. Around 1800, Seishu Hanaoka (1760-1835), the world’s first doctor to conduct breast cancer surgery, used rose water as antiseptic for the treatment of oral cavities. This information is detailed in one of the oldest biographies on anesthetic, passed down for generations in the Hanaoka family. At that time, Seishu sent his pupils to Izumo region in Shimane prefecture to collect wild roses, where rose water had been commonly used as medicine.
Location
To avoid the risk of natural disaster and ensure a stable supply, the Okuizumo Rose Garden currently operates several fields located separately all around Shimane prefecture, surrounded by the Japan Sea and the Chugoku Mountains. Unfortunately, it is not open to the public. However, in the harvest season (May – November), the rose fields exhibit a luxurious scent and vivid imagery of a heavenly red.
