Everything’s Coming Up Rose Books

Scores of surveys say the rose is the gardener’s favorite flower. That would make a book on roses a pretty safe bet as a gift for a gardener, maybe even better than a pair of Swiss Felco pruning shears.

Book publisher’s know this and have released, or re-released, this holiday season, a half-dozen books, and even a video, devoted solely to roses.

The books are a breath-taking lot and won’t sit uncracked on the coffee table for long, especially with the rose planting season starting right after the holidays.

“David Austin’s English Roses,” by David Austin himself (Little, Brown: $40) is going to sell a lot of copies, and a lot of Austin roses at those nurseries smart enough to be stocking these special roses this winter.

The photographs by Clay Perry are hauntingly beautiful, like a Flemish painting one time, a fine French print the next, though the colors are a trifle exaggerated.

California gardeners have learned that they can grow English roses, maybe not as well as the English, but well enough. The blossoms are full and many-petaled like an antebellum skirt--floral Scarlett O’Haras. All are heavenly scented.

Though they look like the roses in old paintings, they are as modern as can be, blooming over and over throughout the year and relatively resistant to disease, like any contemporary rose.

Some are huge plants, some demure, and this books helps sort one from the other, though many who have grown them here suggest doubling the sizes given in the book.

Each English, or “Austin,” rose variety is accompanied by a drawing that suggests the plant’s size and shape. But, while Austin suggests five feet tall for the golden Graham Thomas, 10 is not uncommon here, but he is aware of that fact, and mentions it in the accompanying text, with a suggestion of what to do.

*

Better yet, get a copy of “English Roses in Southern California,” by Clair G. Martin, III, curator of the Huntington’s rose gardens. It’s meant as a companion volume, for Austin’s new book, or his republished-in-paperback “Old Roses and English Roses” (Antique Collector’s Club: $25). They provide the pictures, Martin provides the cultural information for Southern California. One can be a present, the other a stocking stuffer.

Martin also sorts out which do well here, and which don’t, with hints on planting, pruning, pest control and more.

Hortus nursery (284 East Orange Grove Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91104), is publishing the book, and it is available from them, for $9.99 plus $1.50 tax and shipping.

*

“In Search of Lost Roses” by Thomas Christopher (Avon; $10) is another paperback stocking stuffer and a fun read. It’s about a quest for truly antique rose varieties, found in garden and graveyard, on what are called “rose rustles.” One chapter recounts a journey to California’s Mother Lode.

*

“Rose Gardens, Their History and Design,” is a very pretty book by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall (Henry Holt: $39.95), but looking through it is like subscribing to “Country Living,” while living in Los Angeles.

The gardens are as English as can be, and while the brain may waltz away while looking at the incredibly beautiful planting plan for the Queen’s Garden at Sudeley Castle, that Santa Ana wind pounding on the window will bring you back quick enough--this is not England and not much of the information is helpful. But this might be the perfect gift for someone back East.

*

“The Ultimate Rose Book,” by Stirling Macoboy (Harry N. Abrams: $49.50) seeks to be just that. It certainly must be one of the heaviest, weighing 7.3 pounds (according to the post office scale).

It’s an encyclopedic work, listing 1,500 roses. And, there’s a color photograph of every one!

There’s more to the book than that, of course, with short sections on history, culture and much miscellany, but the photos of all those roses are what will bring the gardener back to this book time and again.

It’s interesting that Australian Macoboy and Californian Rayford Clayton Reddell, in a new video tape called “Growing Good Roses” (Larkspur: $29.50), emphasize an idea you don’t hear much about here.

When they plant bare-root roses (the way they’re sold in winter), they practically cover the bare branches with a heap of organic material, carefully washing it away as the plants sprout in spring. This is probably a good idea here as well, protecting the canes from our sometimes hot winter sun, and those drying Santa Ana winds.

There’s lots of useful information on Reddell’s tape, particularly for the neophyte, and it even mentions English roses, being right up to date.

Besides showing most clearly how to plant bare-root roses, he demonstrates pruning (what gardeners should be doing after the holidays), watering, fertilizing, mulching, but cops out on pest control, showing how to spray, but not with what (admittedly a tricky subject for garden writers and video hosts).

Reddell is an accomplished rose grower, being one of the first to commercially raise garden roses for the cut-flower market (most roses sold by florists--like market tomatoes--are special, often uninteresting, rose varieties).