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Growing Roses Organically: Your Guide to Creating an Easy-Care Garden Full of Fragrance and Beauty (Rodale Organic Gardening Book)
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Product Description
Not many gardeners can resist the beauty of a rose-- a flower so divine and graceful in appearance and, in many cases, so wonderfully fragrant that it evokes thoughts of love and romance at first encounter. Many gardeners, however, also see a fussy plant that's hard to grow and needs special attention, as well as a host of chemicals to keep diseases and pests at bay.
In Growing Roses Organically, Barbara Wilde challenges the myth that growing roses has to be a time-consuming task that you can't do effectively without using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In fact, she takes the intimidation out of growing roses by sharing her well-rounded, holistic approach for success. Wilde starts with tips for choosing healthy varieties, including hints for buying the best bareroot and container plants. She guides you through careful soil preparation and proper planting techniques and offers advice on how to gently intervene when it comes to pest and disease problems. Wilde also demystifies pruning-- a task that perplexes many gardeners. Her step-by-step explanation of various techniques makes this task doable for every gardener, including beginners.
You'll also find invaluable information in A Gallery of Roses, an eye-catching identification guide that boasts more than 100 roses best suited for organic gardening techniques. Each entry in the gallery includes a detailed description of the rose and its best uses, as well as ratings for fragrance, disease susceptibility, and shade tolerance.
To round out Growing Roses Organically, you'll discover how to incorporate roses into your garden. Wilde dismisses the notion that you need to grow roses in a formal setting and instead presents four garden designs that incorporate roses with everything from perennials and wildflowers to trees and shrubs. Her design do's and don'ts along with winning plant combinations demonstrate how naturally roses fit into the landscape.
In sharing her wisdom and experience, Barbara Wilde shows that growing roses doesn't have to be labor-intensive or frustrating. By choosing the right varieties and providing proper care, roses really can be a welcome part of every garden-- including yours.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #449337 in Books
- Published on: 2002-05-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
If the word rose immediately conjures up visions of clouds of chemical sprays combating a host of diseases and hordes of pests, then the concept of organic rose gardening might seem laughable if not impossible. Unfortunately, many gardeners who eschew chemical applications deprive themselves of the joy of rose gardening solely because of perceived high-maintenance care requirements. Fortunately, Wilde comes to the rescue, extolling basic, commonsense methods of gardening that demonstrate the ease and simplicity of an organic approach with these much-admired but often-avoided plants. From genetics to a history of rose breeding, Wilde illustrates how roses have come to be so demanding, setting the framework for selection guidelines for roses that, by their very nature, are ideally suited to less chemically dependent care. Based on her own extensive experience, Wilde's information is exhaustive but eminently accessible: a cornucopia of comprehensive charts, thoughtful tips, and planting pointers, plus an encyclopedia of 100-plus of the best roses for organic gardens, provide all the ammunition necessary to turn rose detractors into rose devotees. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Barbara Wilde has compiled a complete approach for growing roses the way we need to, in the real world. This is information that all of us have been wanting-- not just the best organic methods, but also the most worthwhile and productive varieties. She tells us the species that can take care of themselves, the best ancient cultivars, and the very latest in breeding trends."--Rev. Douglas T. Seidel, consultant for the rose collection at the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants
"I hope gardeners will take advantage of Barbara Wilde's thorough knowledge and experience in growing roses by using this book. Her sensible advice made me realize organic growing practices are at the heart of all the best gardens, not just those meant for food crops. I was particularly intrigued by her emphasis on the importance of the proper selection of roses and her knowledge of many European hybrids. And with all the work that modern hybridizers have done to increase hardiness and disease resistance in roses, it's well worth the effort to get these roses into our gardens. Wilde doesn't try to tell us there is no work involved with growing good roses but does tell us where to put our energies for a sustainable payback for our efforts."--Saxon Holt, photo director, PhotoBotanic.com, and an award-winning photographer with six books on roses currently in print
From the Inside Flap
Growing Roses Organically
Not many gardeners can resist the beauty of a rose-- a flower so divine and graceful in appearance and, in many cases, so wonderfully fragrant that it evokes thoughts of love and romance at first encounter. Many gardeners, however, also see a fussy plant that's hard to grow and needs special attention, as well as a host of chemicals to keep diseases and pests at bay.
In Growing Roses Organically, Barbara Wilde challenges the myth that growing roses has to be a time-consuming task that you can't do effectively without using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In fact, she takes the intimidation out of growing roses by sharing her well-rounded, holistic approach for success. Wilde starts with tips for choosing healthy varieties, including hints for buying the best bareroot and container plants. She guides you through careful soil preparation and proper planting techniques and offers advice on how to gently intervene when it comes to pest and disease problems. Wilde also demystifies pruning-- a task that perplexes many gardeners. Her step-by-step explanation of various techniques makes this task doable for every gardener, including beginners.
You'll also find invaluable information in A Gallery of Roses, an eye-catching identification guide that boasts more than 100 roses best suited for organic gardening techniques. Each entry in the gallery includes a detailed description of the rose and its best uses, as well as ratings for fragrance, disease susceptibility, and shade tolerance.
To round out Growing Roses Organically, you'll discover how to incorporate roses into your garden. Wilde dismisses the notion that you need to grow roses in a formal setting and instead presents four garden designs that incorporate roses with everything from perennials and wildflowers to trees and shrubs. Her design do's and don'ts along with winning plant combinations demonstrate how naturally roses fit into the landscape.
In sharing her wisdom and experience, Barbara Wilde shows that growing roses doesn't have to be labor-intensive or frustrating. By choosing the right varieties and providing proper care, roses really can be a welcome part of every garden-- including yours.
About the Author
Barbara Wilde has been gardening organically since the age of 17, when her Swiss grandmother first introduced her to gardening. As owner of a midwestern specialty plant nursery, Barbara spent 10 years exploring garden design and ornamental horticulture and growing heirloom and European fruits, vegetables, and cut flowers organically. As a garden designer and education specialist for a premier midwestern landscape firm, she developed staff training curriculum and pioneered organic landscaping techniques still in use by the firm today.
Barbara has written for Horticulture magazine and Rodale publications and is the regular garden columnist for Indianapolis Woman magazine. A frequent public speaker on horticulture, she is known for her ecologically sensitive designs that use a wide variety of unusual plants.At the site, you can find articles on French gardens, practical gardening advice, favorite plants, kitchen gardening, her life in Paris, and even cooking-- her (barely) subordinate passion. When not writing content for the site, Barbara spends her time traveling throughout France searching for traditional French garden seeds and artisanal products, including tools, books, and decorating items, which she sells on her Web site. She also gardens with her companion, Denis, on their Parisian terrace and on weekends at an old Normandy farmhouse.
Customer Reviews
Great instructions and info, plus beautiful pictures
This is a practical, pretty, and highly useful book for anyone who wants to smell the roses, especially in climates less temperate than the west coast.
The number of roses included is far from encyclopaedic, but for the roses Ms Wilde does include, she reports thoroughly on on their disease susceptibility, growth habit, hardiness, fragrance, and more. In nearly all cases, a gorgeous color photo accompanies. In fact, stripped of its useful information, this book would still be a fine buy for its large color photos. Before the gallery of roses, you'll find clear and helpful instructions about how to prepare for planting and how to accomplish the actual planting. Although the emphasis obviously centers on organic methods, this is a fine general reference on growing roses.
The book itself seems reasonably well put together. I haven't spent months poring over it yet, but I do not have the early feeling of dread when a poorly glued book seems ready to fall apart in my hands. Probably part of the reason is that the book is large enough to be helpful, but not so large that its very size works to break it apart. The format, in other words, allows for some large and luscious eye candy, but it is not as big as many modern illustrated gardening books which should really come with their own stands.
Photographs, clear drawings, and lucid instructions and descriptions make this book a pleasure to own and and treasure to use.
Direct, simple instructions and details
Growing Roses Organically: Your Guide To Creating An Easy-Care Garden Full Of Fragrance And Beauty by garden designer and horticulturalist expert Barbara Wilde is a fabulous, full-color guide to creating a beautiful organic garden tailored to the rose-lover's tastes. Direct, simple instructions and details on a wide variety of roses enhance this superb reference which is ideal for gardeners of all skill levels. From the basics of getting started; through issues such as watering, fertilizing, pruning, disease and insect infestation; to the details of designing rose gardens (included the Mixed Border; Wild Gardens, Hedging, and Wildlife Gardens), Barbara Wilde writes with an accessibility that is as informative as it is easy-to-apply. Of special note is chapter ten, "A Gallery of Roses". If you aspiring to growing a garden of roses, begin your preparations by giving Barbara Wilde's Growing Roses Organically a careful reading!
Not the greatest how-to book for roses
I am a big fan of organic gardening, but I just can't agree with the other posters here who've raved about this book. I'm glad it's not the first one I've read on organic gardening or on roses. If it had been, I think I would have given up! Wilde makes it sound entirely too complicated, especially for the typical home gardener. Also, not that many roses are featured, and information on them (fragrance,etc differs from what I've read elsewhere and/or experienced in my own garden. An OK book, but be sure you read others and go to the excellent site help me find dot com to get some perspective. Visit local gardens to see what does well. And don't be afraid to experiment in your own garden, keeping it simple as much as possible. If you 1.) choose roses known to do well in your area, 2.) plant them properly making sure they have plenty of sun, food and water, and 3.) cultivate them cleanly, keeping their bases free of fallen leaves and debris - the job is mostly done. ENJOY YOUR ROSES!
