The Ultimate Rose Book

About this book

Stirling Macoboy's book has become a classic among rose lovers, not just for its beautiful pictures and comprehensive coverage, but also thanks to its author's good-humoured and opinionated observations and selections. Out of tens of thousands of rose varieties, he chose 1,500 for this definitive book.

The new edition includes 300 varieties that were not in the previous one, selected for their beauty, fragrance, hardiness and popularity, as well as new chapters on the history of the rose, the renaissance of garden roses, climbers and ramblers and great rose gardens of the world. This is in addition to updated chapters on the classification of roses, wild roses, old garden roses, modern roses, miniatures and multi-floras, rose cultivation, special roses and rose breeders, as well as a glossary and bibliography. The 2,000 colour photographs include all of the varieties named in the book.

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Biography

Stirling Macoboy, who died in 2005, was born in Victoria, Australia. His career in horticulture took him all over the world and he was the author and photographer of more than forty books on gardening. Macoboy came from a long line of gardeners: his great-grandfather, William Stirling, was a professional nurseryman in Australia in the 1840s and '50s; his grandfather was a well-known amateur gardener; and he was a descendant of the Reverend William Mason, author of the 1783 classic The English Garden. Tommy Cairns currently serves as President of the World Federation of Rose Societies for 2003-2006. An authority on all aspects of growing roses, Cairns is a frequent contributor to many rose publications. He was awarded the Klima Medal of the American Rose Society for excellence in rose education in 2000 and the prestigious Dean Hole Medal of the Royal National Rose Society in 2005. The Scottish born Cairns lives in Studio City, California.