The Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing

The book that taught America to grow roses out of doors: how to site and prepare a bed, how to prune and propagate, and a rated list of the best varieties with the faults of each set down honestly.

About the Book

1920Published
George C. Thomas, Jr.Author
216Chapters
158Pages on this site

George C. Thomas, Jr. was an amateur rosarian of the serious kind, and The Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing (1920) became the American standard: soil and situation, planting, pruning, propagation, hybridizing, and above all the rated variety lists.

Those lists are the book’s spine — each rose given its class, its breeder and year, and a candid verdict on colour, fragrance, habit and constitution.

This digital edition is built from a dual-engine OCR of the 1920 edition, reconciled page by page.

This site reproduces the complete text of the original 1920 edition, digitized page by page from the original printing. The book is in the public domain.

Rights & ReuseThe complete text of The Practical Book of Outdoor Rose Growing (1920) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.