Beautiful Book, Essential Information
If the striking close-up of a pink bloom on the cover of this book doesn’t draw you in, the promise of its subtitle will: Growing Roses Organically: Your Guide to Creating an Easy-Case Garden Full of Fragrance and Beauty, and that kind of information and inspiration is just what you’ll find in this lovely volume by Barbara Wilde. The book opens with a nice discussion of the history of roses and differentiates among classes and groups of roses in some informative, easily-understood charts. The next chapter covers a number of important points about choosing and buying appropriate roses, especially healthy ones. Information about planting follows and includes advice about selecting a site and evaluating and correcting the soil. Then come Wilde’s expert tips for planting and establishing roses in pots, in your garden, and even in the middle of your lawn. There’s a short, helpful chapter on watering, and a longer one of fertilizing roses—organically, of course—that’s filled with useful, unusual information. The lengthy chapter on pruning also covers training rose bushes and includes photos, drawings, and steps that illustrate just about every kind of pruning that a rose-grower could need. Wilde’s discussion of diseases is thorough and includes charts as well as advice for preventing problems and then dealing with them. After that, there’s another helpful chapter that covers pest problems, preventative measures, and treatments, including organic insecticides. Both of these chapters, like many of the others, include charts that clearly and concisely explain options for the issues as well as solutions. Almost one third of the Growing Roses Organically is dedicated to Wilde’s description of the roses that she recommends for growing organically—the ones she describes as “the top all-around performers.” Her rose gallery organizes the varieties by their size and includes basic details about the rose bushes (such as their overall size and uses) as well as alternate names, lively descriptions, and photographs of lush, lovely blossoms. The book concludes with full-length chapters on often-overlooked topics, such as adding roses to a mixed border, creating a wild garden or one for wildlife, and using roses for hedges. All of these chapters include a variety of features (such as photos, charts, diagrams, and design plans) that illustrate Wilde’s suggestions adeptly. After reading this book, it’s easy to feel confident about growing beautiful roses and being able to do so organically. There’s a lot of information in here, so it’s the kind of guidebook to read—and even re-read—over the winter as you plan your garden. Growing Roses Organically is a beauty of a resource that should be on all rose-lovers’ own shopping lists, just in case they don’t make it to Santa’s nice list. It’s also available at the Irondequoit and Brockport-Seymour libraries. If this sounds like your kind of book, then we might be your kind of people. Why not put the Greater Rochester Rose Society on your calendar for 2019? We’ll start meeting on the first Tuesday again in March, and visitors are always welcome to join us for the program, conversation, and refreshments.
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Patti Dee, Archives
December 2018
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