Customer Reviews

100 Favorite Roses

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I will buy virtually any book on roses so I don't regret buying this one. The book provides each rose a single page and photograph so its fun to just look at the pictures, annotated with the relevant stats and a short description of the rose. The author has a long association with Jackson-Perkins and Horticulture Magazine. For me, the book's shortcomings are fairly serious. Reviewing the descriptions of the roses made it immensely obvious that the author and I don't use similar criteria when identifying favorite roses. The term 'favorite' is a purely subjective term so one can't critique the author for a value judgement, nevertheless, I wouldn't let this list of favorites guide my selection of roses to plant. For example, one favorite rose had the following in the description: "Mildew and blackspot are often a problem", "It is not especially hardy" and has "slight fragrance." Another rose had "sparse growth and inhibited flower! ing when hot" while at the same time being "not super hardy". Those roses wouldn't go in my garden. Just as a nicety, I always look for a bibliography and this book had none. Cultivation was only very briefly touched on.

Beautiful illustrations, information good, great gift or coffee table book!