With more than 70 titles on the market and hundreds from times past, the interested gardener must specify a subject. Their contents vary from basic descriptions, to special varieties, to landscaping, to horticulture, and in varying levels from experienced gardener to novice.
Here's my "Top 10" list for the Rose Library at my house.
1) For the beginning gardener interested in roses: Sunset's Roses: Planting and Care, Pruning and Landscape Ideas or a similar book, Ortho's All About Roses. Both are excellent rose books for the beginner, inexpensive, and cover a variety of traditional rose cultural techniques. The Ortho book describes 250 roses, contains a special section on rose breeding, growing tips, and an easy-to-follow chart of pest and disease control.
2) For the new rosarian interested in what to do each month of the year: Stephen Scanniello's A Year of Roses. Stephen's book chronicles not only the month-by-month chores required in the rose garden, but includes important cultural notes based on his experience growing more than 1500 rose varieties at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Cranford Rose Garden. What particularly catches my attention in this book is the author's cause and effect relationships between rose culture and subsequent pest and disease attacks. Also of interest to the new rosarian are his suggestions for roses best suited to certain garden situations and how to train them for their best show.
3) For the experienced gardener looking to expand into roses: Judith McKeon's Gardening with Roses: Designs for Easy-Care Climbers, Ramblers & Shrubs. This text is especially useful for incorporating just the right rose into an established landscape. The author provides 15 different landscape plans incorporating roses into a landscape.
4) For the intermediate rosarian looking for a good reference book: Rayford Reddell's long awaited The Rose Bible. Reddell is a gardening columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle and owner of Garden Valley Ranch in Petaluma, California, one of the largest producers of roses in the United States. His lavish text contains more than 400 photos by Robert Galyean and descriptions of both antique and modern roses.
5) For the intermediate rosarian looking for official rose registration names and descriptions: Modern Roses 10, edited by The American Rose Society, is a must for any serious rosarian. This book is now pretty hard to find, but it doesn't hurt to look through the shelves for a copy. You can contact the ARS at The American Rose Society, PO Box 30000, Shreveport, LA, 71130-0030.
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