The rose is the Mona Lisa of the plant world. For millennia, humans have coveted them, grown them, celebrated them in every art form and sought out new forms and varieties. Some of us, especially those who have to do hand-to-hand combat with blackspot and other rose diseases, have occasionally cursed them. But the fascination … Read more
Italian writer Andrea di Robilant has long been a man in search of the past. He mined a rich vein of family history in Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon, the 2008 biography of his ancestor Lucia Mocenigo, a late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Venetian aristocrat and friend of the French … Read more
BOOK REVIEW: THE QUEST FOR THE ROSE One of my favorite horticultural subjects is roses and I have lots of books on them. In Search of Lost Roses, Thomas Christopher’s 2002 book on “rose rustling” and the discovery of old rose varieties in out-of-the-way places, is one of the best. Another is A Rose … Read more
