The Ultimate Rose Book: New Expanded Edition

by Stirling Macoboy, Tommy Cairns (Editor)

The spectacularly successful Ultimate Rose Book is back in a thoroughly updated and revised edition. Rosarian Stirling Macoboy’s book is a classic, not just for its beautiful pictures and comprehensive coverage, but also for its author’s good-humored, opinionated observations and his selection of 1,500 rose varieties to feature out of tens of thousands.

The expanded edition features 300 new varieties, selected for their beauty, fragrance, hardiness, and popularity, as well as new features on the history of the rose, the renaissance of garden roses, climbers, and ramblers, and great rose gardens of the world. There are also updated chapters on the classification of roses, as well as a glossary and bibliography. The 2,000 color photographs include the varieties named in the book.

An indispensable reference that possesses visual beauty and literary wit and soul, The Ultimate Rose Book is for gardeners and rose lovers everywhere.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction

488 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 1993

About the author

A love of plants seems to run in the blood of author/photographer Stirling Macoboy. He is often called Bill after his grandfather Will Stirling, an irrigation engineer who was also an enthusiastic amateur gardener. A great-great-grandfather of the same name immigrated to Australia from Scotland in the 1840s as a professional nurseryman. On Bill's father's side of the family, yet another William was William Mason, the poet, clergyman and author of the garden blockbuster of 1783, The English Garden, recently reprinted.

Whether or not you believe that green thumbs can be inherited, Bill has become an international best-selling author of garden books, including What Flower is That? which has sold over three-quarters of a million copies, What Tree is That?, What Indoor Plant is That?, The Joy of Flowers and the magnificent Colour Dictionary of Camellias, hailed world-wide as the ultimate book on that subject, and translated into several languages. Between books, Bill travels widely to photograph his favourite subjects, runs a picture library, and is garden consultant for the popular Better Homes and Gardens magazine in Australia.

Reviews

[Geri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an exquisite book. Anyone who loves roses will love this book. The "Ultimate Rose Book" is aptly named. Not dainty - it's a large, heavy coffee-table book - but it offers everything you would want to see & know about roses, whether you're an admirer, a beginning gardner or an expert.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Ultimate Rose Book by Stirling Macoboy (Harry N. Abrams Inc. 1993) (635.933) (3795).

My personal gardening library did not include a comprehensive guide to roses and their care, so I purchased a used HB copy of this massive volume in good condition from McKay’s for $2.00 on 6/1/21.

This compilation contains advanced information about rose cultivation. Each popular cultivar (or at least those varieties which the breeders had brought into the stream of commerce by the time of this book’s publication in 1993) is included with a beautiful photo of each bloom along with the plant’s special requirements.

My rating: 7/10, finished 5/29/23 (3795).

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was just delightful. I picked it up at a book sale and spent a lovely evening and next day perusing it. It was published in the early 1990s and covers a lots of roses from the mid- to late-20th century, which I haven’t found much about previously.

It was interesting to see roses from the early career of David Austin—not many of those are still in production.

[Linda]

good pictures of roses