Roses

'What is this rose,' the great rosarian Graham Stuart Thomas asks, 'thatnslaves gardeners?...Why, in short, does everyone love a rose, and what doest offer that other flowers lack?' Wayne Winterrowd posed this question tohirty-two eminent fellow gardeners, who join him in giving their highlyriginal and engaging responses in this book. Michael Pollan, is 'dazzled,mitten...bowled over' by 'Maiden's Blush' (known in France as 'Cuisse deymphe Emue'), while Mirabel Osler honours Rosa sancta, the Holy Rose ofbyssinia, only to find that for others it may 'stink of the Fall'.hristopher Lloyd gleefully tells of rousting out him mother's extensive butroublesome collection at Great Dixter - allowing, though, a fewndispensables to stay on, for, as he concedes, 'Some roses are worthtruggling for, after all.' Winterrowd's contributors constitute a Who's Whof contemporary garden writers. Their highly personal essays are rich witheminiscence, with prejudice, with love remembered or recently experiencednd sometimes with cantankerous personal opinion. Many offer fascinating