Old-fashioned and David Austin Roses - Hardcover

Taylor, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1552978818 ISBN 13: 9781552978818

Publisher: Firefly Books, 2004

Synopsis

A gardener-friendly guide to growing roses.

Old-fashioned roses are cherished by gardeners for their timeless beauty, strong fragrance and fascinating history. Growing these roses -- along with their hybrids -- offers gardeners an opportunity to bring history to life. It is enormously gratifying to know that the roses blooming in one's garden were first cultivated by the Empress Josephine or were originally used to cover Cleopatra's bed.

Old-fashioned and David Austin Roses communicates the pure romance of old fashioned roses while demystifying the process of growing them. Contents include:

• History
• Once-flowering old roses
• Repeat-flowering old roses
• David Austin roses
• Cultivation
• Landscaping with old roses
• Diversions: making rose oil, syrup and more

Each section of the book is organized by species and near hybrids. A concise history introduces the cultivars along with a short description that includes date of origin, growing requirements and interesting historical facts. Straightforward advice for planning and growing includes practical tips for feeding, watering, mulching, deadheading, cutting, pruning and minimizing the effects of pests, diseases and cold weather.

There are landscaping instructions for borders and beds, containers, groundcover, rose shrubs, hedges, the woodland garden and climbers. Finally, a rose cookbook includes recipes for creating such ancient concoctions as rose oil/perfume, rose and rhubarb syrup and rose brandy.

Old-fashioned and David Austin Roses is an accessible and essential reference for novice and experienced gardeners.

About this title

About the Author:

Barbara Lea Taylor is a freelance writer whose articles regularly appear in a national gardening magazine. This is her third book on old-fashioned roses.

Juliet Nicholas is a photographer and keen gardener. She specializes in garden, landscape, architectural and documentary photography.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction

What is a rose?
A cup of pure delight.
Anon

This is my fourth book about roses. I have loved roses for more years than I am going to tell you. I still have so much to learn -- and they are still so much fun.

When you are hooked by old-fashioned roses, it is the beginning of a love affair to last a lifetime -- and there aren't too many of those around. They bring you not only fragrance and beauty, but fascinating tales from the past. When you plant a rose, you plant history with all its triumphs and disasters, trauma and trivia. They will give you far more than you expect or probably deserve and you will never, ever be bored.

Gardeners are practical people but most of us, whether or not we know it, are artists of a sort. Why else would we try year after year to paint pictures with plants on a constantly changing and often inhospitable canvas? Think of gardening as painting with a very broad brush -- and the really lovely thing about it is that if it doesn't work, we can rearrange it all next year. In spite of all our grumbling, we keep on trying because we love it, it's addictive and it keeps us off the streets.

There is no mystique about growing roses, old or new. It is easier than the books or the array of pest and disease control potions in garden centers would persuade us. There are roses to enhance every aspect of landscaping -- riotous ramblers that fling themselves about, roses that climb sedately, shrub roses of substance, roses for hedges high or low, roses that are comfortable in beds, well-mannered roses for patios and pots, groundcover roses that scramble and trail.

There are roses that will light up our gardens three seasons out of four with foliage flowers and hips, and roses that will throw their hearts into just one exuberant flowering a year, but it will be so generous, so gorgeous, so overpoweringly lovely that we will not forget it.

In this book I have written about some of the old-fashioned roses and English roses I know well. I have placed them in basic groups -- purists would divide them further -- and I have listed a few roses that are not quite old enough to qualify but are too beautiful to leave out. There are many more roses I would have loved to include but I must leave them for you to discover.

Make room for roses. They may mortify the flesh a little but they will definitely lift your spirits like no other flower.

About this edition

• Publisher: Firefly Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1552978818
• ISBN 13: 9781552978818
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 96