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.

great book (5.0)

Beautiful book--makes me want to run out to the garden & see what roses I can plant.

A Perfect Valentine Gift (5.0)

We all know that most women love to receive flowers - especially on Valentine's Day. This year I decided to do something different and give my wife, who loves roses and grows them, the "Ultimate Rose Book" instead of a bouquet that would only last a week. She abasolutely loved it! She has poured over it again and again, and will for years to come. The photography is gorgeous and information very helpful. We highly recommend it to any serious "Rose" person.

Good for older modern roses (5.0)

This is an excellent book for those gardeners wanting information on many of the older hybrid teas and floribundas plus climbers that are carried by only specialized rose nurseries. This book also tells it like it is and so you get the negative aspects of some roses. Yes the book is VERY large but perfect to raise a small child to the table.

The Ultimate Rose Book (5.0)

This is such a lovely book, it's worth owning just to look at the beautiful photographs of roses. However, it offers much more. There are full descriptions of each rose, including origin, developer, growth, fragrance, etc. I needed to find a rose developed in Germany. Using this book I created quite a long list of potential roses. When I located a grower of the rose I wanted, it was interesting to see this book prominently displayed among his reference works. Highly recommended.

Best Coffee Table Rose Book (4.0)

This is the first Rose Book in my collection; it is responsible for my interest in roses. It is the biggest book of my rose book collection; in height, thickness or weight. Its production qualities are high and more than a decade after purchasing it, it is a book I still hold dear.

Over 1500 roses are presented, and for each there is a photo. The writing is clear and concise. And more than any other reference, we hear the writer's voice. When Macoboy particularly likes a rose, we know it. If he were writing a scientific reference, this may not be quite appropriate, but this personal voice brings us a step closer to viewing the roses as he does. And this draws us in.

A few bits of crucial information are listed in tabular form, the rose's breeder, its class, and how fragrant the rose is. Entries are listed alphabetically in three main sections: Species Roses, Miniature Roses, All other roses.

The book was published just after the commercial success of Austin's first remontant English roses and a handful of these roses are included.

But almost twenty years after its first release (the edition I write about was printed in the late 1980's), the book is beginning to look and feel dated. There has been a huge amount of work in the area of minis and this section seems quite dated. A significant portion of the Hybrid Tea roses and floribundas are not in commerce - not even at specialty nurseries. And many of the most popular of these classes do not appear. To make matters worse, a noticable portion of the roses Macoboy treasures were distributed only in Australia, so European and American gardeners never would have had a crack at them.

The photos are a mixed bag. On one hand almost every rose about which he writes is photographed. This is a monumental achievement. Few rose books come so close to complete photographic coverage as this one, and any that acheive full photographic coverage are less encyclopedic in scope and/ or present smaller photos. This may be the most photographically generous rose book in print.

Most of the rose photos are pretty good. Many are excellent. And some of the excellent ones fill a whole large page. The layout is large and the feeling it creates is lush and luxurious. But a few of the photos are seriously flawed. One photo, for instance, is of a rose that is waving back and forth madly in the wind and all we can see about the rose is that the flower is reddish - the whole photo is a big smudge. And there are a few cases in which we have serious questions about color reproduction.

So who should buy such a book? Well, if you are a rose-lover and wish to draw someone else into the field, this may be the best book to do it. The lavish illustration and infectious writing will do the trick better than just about any other book. And if you are a rose-lover and you want a coffee table book on roses, this may be the best choice. Or, if you know someone who is a little interested in gardening but knows nothing of roses and is afraid to take the plunge, this would be a good introductory gift.

If you just want a reference, get Botanica's Roses it is more up-to-date and it presents more roses. And visit RoseFile.com for other info on roses and to get help finding more books about roses at Amazon.com.