Celebration of Old Roses

With lavish color photographs, this volume is as handsomely produced as its picture-book predecessors, but readers seeking an overview of the history and cultivation of old-fashioned roses would do better to refer to the first two volumes in this series, The Book of Old Roses and The Book of Classic Old Roses. By this third outing Griffiths seems to have run out of new things to say about his subject and instead indulges in digressive anecdotes and redundant accounts of his travels to famous gardens around the world. However, for the serious rose fancier wanting to learn more about individual rose varieties, there is a trove of information in the listings of 600 types not covered in the previous two works. Odd discrepancies can be found, though, between photographs and their descriptions in the text--such as when an almost-white Borboniana is called ``very deep rose-pink''--and it is jarring in a book of generally high quality to see the occasional photo out of focus. (May)