New Member Benefit: Discount on Rosa: The Story of the Rose, by Peter E. Kukielski,

AHS members receive a 30% discount on a new publication, Rosa: The Story of the Rose, from Yale University Press. AHS members can now log in to access the special promo code. This promotion is valid on orders placed on the publisher’s website through the end of April.

While working with the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, author Peter Kukielski realized that people loved hearing the stories behind the roses (rather than dates or data). In Rosa he brings these incredibly varied tales and associations to the foreground, telling the stories of roses throughout history. Follow along as Kukielski traces the story of the rose from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome to the modern era including bite-sized stories from Nero’s excess exemplified in a rainstorm of rose petals to the rivalry of English noble houses that led to the War of the Roses to the ‘Green Rose’ as a marker of safe houses along the Underground Railroad. Rosa offers an abundance of stories and more than 140 color illustrations in which roses appear as key players in love stories, yes, but also in religion, poetry, painting, literature, science, politics, and medicine. If ever there was a question about the rose’s preeminent place in the world of ornamental horticulture, Kukielski quiets any dissenters with his thoroughly-researched work.

In her foreword to Rosa, Judith Tankard calls Peter’s work revitalizing Beatrix Farrand’s original rose garden at the New York Botanical Garden “truly inspired.” She adds, “Peter’s readable and engaging volume, an undertaking of many years, is sure to inspire new generations of rose lovers.”

If Rosa inspires readers to begin a rose garden of their own, Kukielski ends with words of wisdom and encouragement. “This book has told stories of the rose’s resilience. Its millions of years of survival provide a foundation for its future. The timeless nature of the rose is safe because it is not a whim.”

Peter Kukielski was curator of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden from 2006 to 2014. He now lives in Portland, Maine, but his career has its roots in Atlanta, where for over ten years he owned and operated a rose garden design/maintenance business called The Rose Petaler, Inc.

Today Peter is widely recognized for his work toward sustainability and disease resistance in rose gardens, and is author of Roses Without Chemicals: 150 Disease-Free Varieties That Will Change the Way You Grow Roses (Timber Press, 2015) and co‑editor of The Sustainable Rose Garden (Newbury, 2011).