Customer Reviews

All About Roses (Ortho's All About Gardening)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is definitely very good. The first time I opened it, I was disappointed, as I saw in the first two chapters a history about roses. Then comes the good part: it explains whatever you may need to take care of your roses. It has a lot of pictures and photos, it explains what kind of soil do roses need, how to choose the right plants, planting the roses, watering, fertilizing, pruning, reproducing, combating pest and diseases, how to protect the roses from freezing, etc. It includes pictures of how roses diseases looks like, gives you an explanation of the symptoms, and the solutions available for the disease. The last two chapters describe how to enjoy roses indoors, how to make potpourri, and has an "encyclopedia of roses" with photos of a lot of different species. In short: buy this book. Definitely the "American Rose Society endorsed" logo is well earned.

I found this book to be very helpful. in fact I found just what I wanted. It tells you what types of roses are fragrant, dissease resistant, everything you would need to know about each rose. It also had beautiful pictures and was very easy to follow.

I've got about seven or eight rose books and this one is, hands down, the one with the best and most helpful content, notwithstanding that it is one of the thinnest. Ortho's All About Roses (OAAR) has more pages on how to select a rose, how to plant a rose, how to prune a rose, how to identify rose problems like insects and fungus, and how to winterize a rose than probably any other book on the market. And, it is beautifully illustrated, with very clear photos and illustrations that show exactly where to snip while pruning and what a particular bug or plant ailment looks like. Additionally, it has probably the best section on how to place roses based on the type of garden and how to landscape with roses of any book I've seen, other than maybe Right Rose, Right Place by Peter Schneider, which I found to be an overall less impressive book than this one. There are many, many beautiful pictures of roses situated in gardens, which helps when planning one's plantings. Finally, as a 2007 printing, OAAR is one of the newest rose books on the market and has a lot of entries on the latest varieties that you typically will see in your local garden center or at an online nursery like Edmund's Roses - there are listings, each with a good, clear, representative photo, for newer roses like the Rainbow Knockout, Burgundy Iceberg, Night Owl, etc...

I can think of only a few cons: as a thinner book, they had to cut corners somewhere and that somewhere is with both the number of rose varities they feature in the rose encyclopedia at the back of the book, and with content on each one - rarely do they give full grown plant dimensions except with climbers and a few shrub roses, and sometimes they omit commentary on scent, as well. There are very thorough sections on miniatures and on old garden roses, of which I've only seen a few varieties here and there locally and online, whereas the section on the much more common and popular floribundas was nowhere near as inclusive as it should have been - it needs at least 50% more roses in that section.

If you're thinking about planting a rose or two, this should be the very first book you buy. And if you're already busy with dozens of roses in your garden, I still recommend this book, as I bet there's a thing or two (or four) about roses all but the most devoted rose experts could learn from this excellent book.

This book is amazing by way of explaining roses! If you are thinking about putting a rose anywhere in your garden or home...this book is for you! It starts out telling all about the history of roses and where they originated and so forth. Then it goes into which type of rose is best for certain areas of the yard. Then it actually includes photos of each type of rose....i.e.: climbing, hybrid tea, rambler, floribunda, etc.....and you can compare sizes and figure out what rose you want to plant and where you want to plant it. There is a "calendar" of sorts, for each US zone, and it tells everything about rose care for each month of the year.....when to plant, when to prune, etc. It goes into color and petal shapes and bloomed-size and fragrance/no-fragrance....everything you could possibly want to know about roses. It tells you how to plant.....how to transplant....how to prune....how to fertilize.....and when to do all these things. It has a section devoted to all the diseases that roses are susceptible to.....it shows a photo of the diseased roses....and tells remedies for each disease and even pointers on how to avoid the disease to begin with. The final section is basically an encyclopedia of roses....it has photos of hundreds of roses and describes them briefly....how they smell, where they grow best, how many petals, colors, how many times they bloom a year...etc.,etc.,etc! There is a ton of information in this book and very clear, beautiful and descriptive photos. This is a "must" for anyone interested in growing roses! Worth every penny! I was a novice beginner....this book was brilliantly helpful!

This book is really good and has all kinds of information. This book was recommended by a local rosarian.