The garden was laid out in 1865 by Giuseppe Poggi, the Florentine architect commissioned with reshaping the city after Florence became the capital of the recently unified Italy. Poggi designed the entire Viale dei Colli and Piazzale Michelangelo above; the Rose Garden occupies the sloping hectare immediately below the piazzale, on land once worked as the Podere San Francesco by the Oratorian Fathers. The rose collection itself was begun by Attilio Pucci, and the garden first opened to the public in 1895 during the annual Arts and Flowers festival held each May.

Two later additions defined the garden’s present character. In 1998 the city received a Japanese garden, the Shōrai oasis, donated by Yasuo Kitayama and the Kōdai-ji Zen temple of Kyoto and installed on the lower terrace. In September 2011 the widow of the Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon, who had died in 2005, gave the Municipality of Florence ten bronze sculptures and two plaster casts; figures such as Partir, Je me souviens, Chat and L’Envol are placed along the paths among the rose beds, where they have remained on permanent open-air display.

Today the garden is managed by the Comune di Firenze and open every day from nine in the morning until sunset, with closing times that shift from five in the afternoon in winter to eight in the evening between May and September. Admission is free. The main entrance opens on Viale Giuseppe Poggi at the foot of the staircase that climbs to Piazzale Michelangelo, and the upper terraces give one of the most direct views in the city onto the Duomo, the Arno and the Oltrarno rooftops.