About the Book
Robert Pyle was president of the Conard & Jones Co. of West Grove, Pennsylvania — one of the great American rose nurseries — and president of the American Rose Society, to whose members (“including prospective members”) this thirteenth edition of 1920 is dedicated.
It is a nurseryman's book and makes a nurseryman's promise: that by setting out the right plants of the right sort this spring, you may have cut flowers from those same plants by the last days of May, and bloom almost unbroken until the frosts.
The practical spine of it is the Rose-Lover's Calendar of Operations — what to do to a rose in each month of the year — around which sit chapters on soils, drainage, fertilisers, planting, staking, labelling, mulching, protection from frost and from enemies, and pruning.