The Heritage Garden was originally a sensory garden established by the Tyler Lions Club in the 1970s. Then in 1986, the Gertrude Windsor Garden Club took ownership of the garden and changed its purpose to a garden of historic roses in a landscape setting. It was about 1993 that the Smith County Master Gardener volunteers became the primary and sole caretakers of the Heritage Garden and have subsequentially maintained this garden for many years.

The Tyler Rose Garden has many varieties of roses, particularly hybrids with a varied history. The Heritage Garden is part of the Rose Garden with a concentration of old roses which have survived through the years, growing on their own roots without being hybridized and without many of the problems associated with modern roses.

Today this garden is a display of the antique roses and southern heirloom plants that our ancestors grew in their gardens. Like native plants, antique roses are disease-resistant and easier to grow and propagate than modern and hybrid roses. To preserve and pay homage to the era of antique roses, caretakers allow them to grow into large bushes with minimal pruning.