Reliable Roses: Easy-to-grow Roses that Won’t let You Down
Product Description
A no-fuss guide to growing roses written by a rose expert.
Too often gardeners are intimidated by the many practical requirements of growing roses. This book shows how to grow a garden of roses successfully with surprisingly little effort.
Even the newest gardeners can enjoy the natural beauty, fragrance and exquisite colors of roses.
Here, the objective is enjoyment more than labor. This easy-care guide provides all the critical steps that ensure perfect roses every time: – Planning and designing a rose garden – Selecting the roses that are right for your garden – Planting, the growing cycle and pruning – Maintenance and how best to enjoy your roses
Helpful sections cover how to identify key rose-growing locations in a garden, deciding between old and modern bush or climber varieties and the best places to buy roses. Seventy-five varieties are identified from Alberic Barbier to Warm Wishes including shrub and climbing, long-flowering, versatile, fragrant and easy-to-grow roses.
Another useful section identifies the varieties of roses that give the best results with a minimum of fuss. Quick reference pictograms indicate a rose’s growing zone, ease to succeed and relative performance for the space the plant will take.
Reliable Roses is the perfect handbook for gardeners of all levels who want to add the beauty of roses to their gardens.
Reliable Roses: Easy-to-grow Roses that Won’t let You Down
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An outstanding new reference for rose growers because Harkness, a member of the highly regarded rose growing family in England, helps us understand how great, easy-to-grow roses distinguish themselves from their more troublesome, but still lovely, fellow-travelers.
Only 75 roses made the cut for this book, which is not a very wide scope. This narrows considerably for gardeners like me who contend with truly frigid winters and shorter growing seasons. But the depth! Each rose receives the full Harkness treatment for flower properties (color; shape and size; scent; production), plant properties (shape and size; position; hardiness), foliage properties (color; health check; garden uses), a rating in each overall area of flower properties, plant properties, and foliage properties, and an overall assessment and rating. Harkness provides a framework and 75 examples of how to evaluate a rose, which is tremendously useful for those of us who have space to grow only a few beauties. The detailed directory of roses combined with sensible and lucid explanations of rose-growing make the book ideal for beginners or rose-phobics.
Some haughty rosarians might consider themselves beyond the information presented here. More’s the pity for them because the photographs — all full color and many full page — are remarkable for their clarity, detail, and loveliness. I hope I am never sufficiently expert at rose growing to pass up such a beautiful book.
Rating: 5 / 5
Reliable Roses: Easy-to-grow Roses that Won’t let You Down