Rose Gardening Handbook
Who Else Wants to Know How to Easily Grow Beautiful, Stunning, Healthy
Roses That Everyone Will Admire
in Just 10 Days or Less
- Guaranteed?
Who Else Wants to Know How to Easily Grow Beautiful, Stunning, Healthy
Roses That Everyone Will Admire
in Just 10 Days or Less
- Guaranteed?
December 9th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
A must for rose lovers,
This is a comprehensive, world-wide study of climbing and rambling roses. The topic is a huge one, especially as the writer refuses to be constrained by the contributions of any one country. Most of the leading writers on roses have been American, English or French. The writer adds in the considerable contributions of rose growers in Australia, Germany and Italy as well as other countries.
Despite difficulties in taxonomy and in tracing the history of each rose, the writer has included some 1600 currently grown climbing and rambling roses. I was happy to see an explanation of the differences between the two. Climbers have a small number of stiff stems. Ramblers have a larger number of more pliable stems, and these often trail along the ground. To confuse the issue, some ramblers are known as semi-climbers, and some small climbers are known as “pillar roses”. Let’s confuse it even further – climate can make a considerable difference in growth. A rose that is a climber in one country may be a shrub in another.
The writer is Director of England’s National Rose Society and he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the topic as well as the resources to research it throughout the world. The book covers the origin and history of each of the roses and the reader learns about the people and circumstances behind each of the different varieties.
The colour photographs of the roses, taken by the author in gardens around the world, are exceptionally fine Each rose is identified, of course, but we also find out in which garden and which country the photograph was taken.
This is a book for the gardener who loves roses. It contains a vast amount of information, well organized and presented.
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|December 9th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Valuable rose reference,
This book is exclusively devoted to climbing roses and is a welcome addition to rose reference works (as the author states, only two have previously been published, one by G.A. Stephens in 1933 and the other by Graham Stuart Thomas in 1965).
Over 1600 roses are covered here. They are arranged in chapters by classes (Chinese Synstylae and other species, Rosa gigantea and Rosa chinensis, Aryshire and Evergreen roses, Rosa setigera and the Boursault Roses, Noisettes and Tea roses, Rosa multiflora, Turner’s Crimson Rambler Race, Wichurana hybrids, New Dawn and its descendants, Kordesii hybrids, Climbing Sports and Large Flowered Climbers). Within each of these chapters, the author divides the roses by hybridizer. A richly detailed biographical account of the breeder is usually given which is followed by a list of the roses he/she hybridized and a brief description of each rose. A final chapter, “Cultivating Climbing Roses” discusses growing roses in general. A section of 200 beautiful color plates is featured in the center of the book.
Only one gripe – sizes of roses is given in the metric system which is annoying but at least it will help you to learn meters and centimeters!
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|December 9th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Valuable part of a Rose Book Collection,
David Austin’s Old Roses and English Roses is a gem; a little rough cut but still shimmering due to Austin’s clear love of the subject. This book strikes one as being a little rougher still. Some of these roses he clearly loves. Others get perfunctory treatment.
The section on Hybrid Musk roses is very good – with photos of Cornelia and Buff Beauty stealing the show. The section on species roses really manages to make the point that these shrubby roses warrant a place in many naturalistic gardens. And the section on climbing roses is as good a single treatment of climbers as I’ve seen in one place.
The section on Hybrid Tea roses is the weakest owing to the fairly ugly photos of roses. In some cases the photograph is badly composed; a yellow rose against an orange or tan backdrop. In many cases the rose is perfectly good-looking and the photography crisp and clear. And we come away feeling like we had just eaten at a cheap buffet. Yes it’s food. And we got as much as we cared to eat. Yet, one thinks there must certainly be more to good food than this.
Perhaps Austin is doing this to reinforce his point that, compared to shrubby roses hybrid teas are generally much less beautiful . If so he’s made his point. In any case, quite a large portion of the hybrid tea roses he’s chosen to discuss are still popular almost twenty years after the publication of this book.
Austin is not as lyrical as GS Thomas. And occasionally his narrative wanders a bit. But he has excellent taste and the photographs convey they beauty of the subject. Occasionally, he is even funny: speaking of Rambling Rector: ‘Rose names are not expected to amuse, but here we have an exception’
In another review I write that Botannica’s Roses may be the only rose book you own, owing to its encyclopedic scope. Yet it seems to me that if one is seeking aesthetic guidance this book and its companion Old Roses and English Roses are among the best to be found. And GS Thomas Rose Book. I have considerably less confidence in the aesthetic judgements of rose writers StateSide.
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