In this book's introduction, Lord is honest about the limitations of many roses. He quotes the famous gardener and garden writer Christopher Loyd's complaints about roses and agrees with much of what Loyd says, but concludes by stating that "For all of Christopher Loyd's criticisms, however, I am still convinced that the rose is the queen of all flowers, the most useful of a genera of hardy garden plants. There is no other that produces abundant blooms of so many excellent qualities for so long, nor can any other match it for versatility or garden usefulness." Since Lord isn't willing to give up roses, he focuses on how to use them in the best possible ways.
This book contains chapters entitled "The Heritage of the Rose", "The Rose Garden", "Roses for Structure", Roses for Punctuation", "Roses in Mixed Borders", and "Roses for Wild Gardens".
"The Heritage of the Rose" is a basic horticultural history of the rose. I didn't really learn anything new from this chapter, but it was interesting.
"The Rose Garden" is a history of how roses were grown in rose gardens. Since rose gardens only date from the early nineteenth century, this chapter is mainly about nineteenth century gardens, but there is also information about 20th century rose gardens. Anyone interested in Victorian gardens will find plenty of interesting information in this chapter.
"Roses for Structure" is mainly about pergolas, arbors, and arches. The photographs have me dreaming of adding more climbing roses to my garden, but then I think about spraying them and I come back to earth. If you are thinking about growing climbing roses, you really should read this chapter because it is filled with practical information.
"Roses for Punctuation" was my favorite chapter. Lord begins it by stating that "If you compare a garden with a book and each separate area in it with a chapter of the book, within each chapter are paragraphs, elements of the design that have some separate coherence, such as a vista, a border or a bed. Through each of these we can perceive beginning and ends of planting themes that might be thought to represent sentences within the paragraph, that can be shown to be separate by the design equivalent of a full stop. Where garden sentences are extensive, they can be separated into phrases by less marked accents equivalent to semicolons or commas." Many writers about garden design have compared gardens with music, but I hadn't really thought about the use of focal points like punctuation in a sentence. This idea will have me looking at my garden from a fresh point of view. Lord suggests that a designer begins "with the most emphatic, the exclamation marks of cones, columns and pyramids, and progress to marks of less structural significance such as standards or roses in pots, whose function can be equivalent to a full stop, a semicolon or a comma, depending on the situation. These can be used repeatedly within a design element, for instance along a border or terrace, and can give coherence without unduly interrupting the flow. Even less obtrusive elements such as repeated rose balloons or domes can punctuate in a similar way provided that they can be seen as distinct from the surrounding planting." This chapter is filled with practical information about how to create garden punctuation marks and the photographs of weeping standards are very tempting.
 |
Go To Page: 1 2
