Classic Roses (ISBN 1860463029)

Beales Chooses the Best; Forget the Rest:
This is not a coffee table book. Though the pages are high-quality paper, the photos excellent and plentiful, and the binding high-quality, the book is essentially a meaty reference. If there were a college course on roses, this might serve as a texbook. Beales starts as most authors do by talking about rose history, culture and using roses in the garden. It is clear that Beales is not so interested in roses as show-bench trophy fodder but as vital elements of a user-friendly and colorful garden. This sentiment shows in his selection of cultivars. The bulk of the book is descriptions of roses. Beales has developed the most complete shorthand available for expressing all the things you wish to about a rose: how well it does in the shade, which diseases it gets, when it blooms, how big and bushy the plant is. This means that his text entries can focus on the facets of the rose that make it unique in the garden. In other words, he manages to convey the same amount of information as would a book twice the heft of this very hefty tome. The book does a commendable job covering all old rose classes, climbing roses, shrub roses, species, and near-species cultivars. It is the over-fat classes of Hybrid Perpetuals and Hybrid Teas, that have pricipally recieved the editorial hatchet. And since Beales considers only 2000 or so cultivars, this book is good for culling out the considerable amount of dross among roses - especially among hybrid teas. If you know you will never use roses for any purpose than cutting or showing on a bench, this book will be of only peripheral use. But if you yearn to understand how roses can work in a garden setting, this is one of the best buys around.

I never knew how many different kinds of roses there were:
Publishers, please bring "Classic Roses" by Peter Beales back into print! I bought a copy for a friend and now I can't bear to give it up. It has everything for the rosarian: thousands of enticing color photographs and descriptions (the author's own collection of roses numbers well over 2,000 species and varieties); extensive chapters on using roses in the landscape (even if your 'landscape' happens to be an apartment terrace), the care and cultivation of roses, the history of roses; and at the back of the encyclopediac text, there are extensive appendixes, indices, a glossary of terms, and suggestions for further reading. Peter Beales is also a pleasure to read--very British; very knowledgeable; and it is very obvious that he loves his subject. I have only two minor suggestions for "Classic Roses" if it is once again revised: include U.S.A. climate zones for the roses; include photographs of all (not most) of the roses (I'll bet the author wanted to do this and the publishers wouldn't let him). As fond as I am of my friend, "Classic Roses" and I are never going to part company.

A Must Have For Your Library!!:
I purchased this beauty along with Botanica's Roses, from Amazon. WOW was I delighted! Between the 2 I have almost every rose info I could imagine. It is well worth the money and a must have for every rosarian. I have 40 roses so far and found the info very useful in my continued purchases. (ex: I live in the NW and have wet weather...many roses dislike wet and don't open properly. The books reveal which are poor choices for my such climate. Now that is USEFUL information!) Of course it goes without saying that the author knows his roses and the pictures are, well, drop-dead gorgeous (as are in the Botanica's Roses book.) A 100% must have, along with Botanica's.

A great second or third rose book.:
As its name implies, Classic Roses emphasizes older garden roses and species roses. Its organization by subgenus and section (e.g., "Synstylae") is useful to botanists, but more idiosyncratic for gardeners, especially as most modern roses have ancestors from many species. The book does cover Hybrid Teas and more recent introductions, even including over 50 of David Austin's "New English Roses" up to and including `Scepter'd Isle' (1996). It is not as easy (i.e., a 2-step process via the index) to find specific cultivars as in the similar-sized and also excellent American Rose Society Encyclopedia of Roses, but this book has slightly more cultural information on most varieties, as well as longer - and excellent - chapters on rose history, "Roses in the Landscape" and "The Cultivation of Roses." This book also has a very useful appendix of cultivars by height and narrowly defined (e.g., 4 different yellows) colors. To actually come up with my personal "Rose List" (a 1-page Excel sheet I bring to nurseries) I have primarily used the much smaller (200 page) but in its own way very useful Peter Schneider on Roses - which is limited to that rosarian 's favorite varieties - but of course one also has to have a reference tome or two.

A great second or third rose book.:
As its name implies, Classic Roses emphasizes older garden roses and species roses. Its organization by subgenus and section (e.g., "Synstylae") is useful to botanists, but more idiosyncratic for gardeners, especially as most modern roses have ancestors from many species. The book does cover Hybrid Teas and more recent introductions, even including over 50 of David Austin's "New English Roses." It is not as easy (i.e., a 2-step process via the index) to find specific cultivars as in the similar-sized and also excellent "American Rose Society Encyclopedia of Roses," but this book has slightly more cultural information on most varieties, as well as longer - and excellent - chapters on rose history, "Roses in the Landscape" and "The Cultivation of Roses." This book also has a very useful appendix of cultivars by height and narrowly defined (e.g., 4 different yellows) colors. To actually come up with my personal "Rose List" (a 1-page Excel sheet I bring to nurseries) I have primarily used the much smaller (200 page) but in its own way very useful "Peter Schneider on Roses" - which is limited to that rosarian 's favorite varieties - but of course one also has to have a reference tome or two.