Growing Roses Organically: Your Guide to Creating an Easy-Care Garden Full of Fragrance and Beauty (Rodale Organic Gardening Book)

Not many gardeners can resist the beauty of a rose-- a flower so divine and graceful in appearance and, in many cases, so wonderfully fragrant that it evokes thoughts of love and romance at first encounter. Many gardeners, however, also see a fussy plant that's hard to grow and needs special attention, as well as a host of chemicals to keep diseases and pests at bay.

In Growing Roses Organically, Barbara Wilde challenges the myth that growing roses has to be a time-consuming task that you can't do effectively without using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In fact, she takes the intimidation out of growing roses by sharing her well-rounded, holistic approach for success. Wilde starts with tips for choosing healthy varieties, including hints for buying the best bareroot and container plants. She guides you through careful soil preparation and proper planting techniques and offers advice on how to gently intervene when it comes to pest and disease problems. Wilde also demystifies pruning-- a task that perplexes many gardeners. Her step-by-step explanation of various techniques makes this task doable for every gardener, including beginners.

You'll also find invaluable information in A Gallery of Roses, an eye-catching identification guide that boasts more than 100 roses best suited for organic gardening techniques. Each entry in the gallery includes a detailed description of the rose and its best uses, as well as ratings for fragrance, disease susceptibility, and shade tolerance.

To round out Growing Roses Organically, you'll discover how to incorporate roses into your garden. Wilde dismisses the notion that you need to grow roses in a formal setting and instead presents four garden designs that incorporate roses with everything from perennials and wildflowers to trees and shrubs. Her design do's and don'ts along with winning plant combinations demonstrate how naturally roses fit into the landscape.

In sharing her wisdom and experience, Barbara Wilde shows that growing roses doesn't have to be labor-intensive or frustrating. By choosing the right varieties and providing proper care, roses really can be a welcome part of every garden-- including yours.