Wonderful book.
This is really a fun book that is enriching, informing, and just makes you feel good. Now that old garden roses have become common place again, IN SEARCH OF LOST ROSES probably doesn't have the "umph!" it once had, but I would still reccomend it to anyone. It almost makes you wish you could go back to those days when the old garden roses were rare treasures that wanted hunting to be found.
In short: It's a classic!
For the gardener who like history
This an easy to read book that meanders like a rose garden path through the lives and history of roses and gardeners. The most interesting bits to me were when the author sidetracked into the how and why someone raised roses or wrote a book or painted pictures of them more than the actual botanical 'begats'. He followed roses as they traveled all the routes that were famous in history from the Silk Road to the Oregon Trail. A good book to read on the patio overlooking the rose garden on lovely summer day.
This is a fascinating book
The first book I remember from my childhood is The Tasha Tudor Book of Fairy Tales. Tasha Tudor's illustrations always include garlands of roses, and I always knew I was going to have a garden absolutely full of roses. As a young adult, I was disillusioned with the modern hybrids that were available at that time. They looked stiff and unlovely in the garden, they had little fragrance, and they fell prey to black spot and the cold northern climate. After spending huge amounts of time, effort, and money, I had given up on roses. Then, in the odd way things happen, I came upon this book in the return shelf at the library. I started reading it, and finally realized what was wrong in my experience with roses. The ideal rose in my imagination was a historic rose, not a modern hybrid tea! Thomas Christopher, even though he was a horticulturist, made the same discovery though serendipity. It is really fun to read how he discovered the world of heirloom roses and the people who grow them. You will find yourself enjoying this book while reading it, and then realizing later how much you learned from it. The book led to my gardening with old roses, and later, David Austin Roses, which are everything I ever hoped for in roses. If you want to read more about the history of the rose, another very interesting book on the subject is The Quest for the Rose by Phillips and Rix.
A wonderful book for a curious gardener
I first read this book over ten years ago - I found it to be soothing and exciting and just plain fun at times. Thomas Christopher knew just how to make the search for old roses a dream for me. Since that time, with the Internet and old rose nurseries, finding old roses has become a rather mundane procedure. But this book brings me back to the time when the only way to find old roses was in an old cemetery or the garden of the 90 year old widow around the corner. In many ways, that was more fun.
Whose rose is this?....
Thomas Christopher, a garden writer with a great deal of experience went looking for wild roses. His trip took him all over the United States from Connecticut to Texas to California to the American South. He discovered a unique fellowship of individuals who over the years have grown and thus preserved what are known as `old roses'. I happen to grow Blanc Double de Courbet in my own garden, so was a little annoyed to read that one of Mr. Christopher's interviewees (Mike Lowe of Nashua NH) did not particularly like this particular Rugosa rose. I agree the blossoms are not very tidy as they wither on the plant, but cut a few of these roses in full bloom and bring them in the house and you won't care about the faded blossoms (which are more scented than some of the modern hybrids in full bloom). I like to place a vase of these white roses next to my reading chair. The scent is so fabulous that from time to time I become aware of it no matter how engrossing the book.
Christopher interviews folks in California who live in the old gold mine areas where everything is in shambles except the roses growing madly in the abandoned gardens. He interviews elderly Black women who have grown old roses abandoned by their employers who took up with the new hybrids. The true identity of the roses is often unknown (or was not known before modern genetics) and thus the roses have acquired the names of the persons who `saved' them. For example, one rose named `Miss Mary Minor' was later identified as `Souvenir de la Malmaison'.
Malmaison, as anyone who grows roses knows was the garden of Josephine Bonaparte. All garden writers who tell the tale like to remind readers that even the British during their battles with Napoleon accommodated Malmaison. Josephine was able to maintain her garden and stay in contact with British Rosarians in spite of the sea battles that raged around her.
Which leads to the decision of the United States to name the rose as the national flower (the rose is the national flower of England not France). Some of us are old enough to remember Senator Dirksen lauding the marigold and nominating it for the honor of national flower. Chistopher reminds the reader that like Benjamin Franklin and the turkey, Dirksen was doomed to fail. In the end, the US congress chose the rose. Some us like to imagine the American rose is a wild five-petaled rose and not one of those silly hybrids found in florist's shops.
(11 reviews)
