You must either read this book online or download the approximately 164 doubled pages.

If you are at all interested in Old Garden Roses, and the point in time before the total triumph of the Hybrid Tea, Floribunda and Miniature classes, this book is an essential read. Mrs. Drennan was born in 1843 on a plantation in Mississippi and lived in the Gulf area for most of her life. She was almost seventy years of age when the book was published. A lifetime of knowledge, opinion, preferences, acquired lore, reading and memory appears in every chapter.

Her topic is roses that bloom more than a single flush.  Her mish-mashing of Noisettes, Hybrid Perpetuals, traditional teas, Hybrid Teas and ramblers is subject to the singular qualification of 'everblooming'. If it is everblooming and has appeared in the South, Mrs. Drennan will most likely cite it.  At the conclusion of the book is a list of some 572 roses—plus or minus a couple of repeats—that meet her standards of everblooming as opposed even to those which flush in the spring and produce a few scattered in the fall. Some of her comments contradict accepted lore today—particularly when she asserts that 'Malmaison' was the first Bourbon rose, or that York and Lancaster (complete with historical factoids) is in the Bengal class.

However, the Drennan prose is more than just readable or serviceable. Her description of 'American Beauty,' as being an 'unusual shade of carmine-crimson with a brilliant underglow, has over it a violet tinge, as if a film of bluish smoke hovered over the red velvety petals' graces a 2007 online catalog (The Uncommon Rose). And when she asserts that 'Picayune' does not grow in panicles or sprays, but rather sprinkles itself singly nestled among the foliage, there is a sudden urge to go check your own specimen to see if it conforms to the description.

Some 180 of the roses mentioned in the end page listings are still in the commercial market, although many of them only tenuously so as either custom grown or available abroad. And she is unstinting in her praise of roses that survived as well as those that have not. 'Bridesmaid' is one of the most 'famous roses in the world' (page 225), and the no longer available 'Souvenir de President Carnot' is conceded by experts to be 'one of the finest roses in the world' (page 206).

Mrs. Drennan gardens with certain preferences—the use of water to forestall and cure insect and fungal attacks, the belief that location is of singular importance in maintaining rose health—particularly with  the morning sun on an eastern exposure, or the importance of selecting the proper plants best suited to the climate where they are to be located.

She regards stagnant water as fatal to roses, so good drainage is vital. And she recognizes that teas and Bourbons require less severe pruning than Hybrid Perpetuals and Rugosas, although she does believe in pruning for rejuvenation purposes.

In a short chapter she suggests roses appropriate for funerary purposes, a practice with little application in the modern world; for example, Mrs. Drennan prefers 'Marie Pavie' and 'Clotilde Soupert' as excellent roses for the graves of little children. Other roses suitable for memory plantings include the waxen white blooms of  'Cornelia Cook—perhaps a clue to some future 'found' rose—that retains its dark green foliage long after other plants have surrendered to wintry elements. And there is the interesting suggestion that 'Sombreuil,' most likely 'Mlle de Sombreuil,' was the parent of some of the poly-tea roses. Unfortunately, there is no documentation for this suggestion, just the tantalizing mention.

The value of this book is partially in the lists of roses mentioned with the attendant descriptions, and the suggestions of possibilities for recovery of the roses no longer in commerce through her prose. To some extent, you have to avoid being seduced by her charm into accepting inaccurate or fanciful notions. And the fact is that charm is a powerful form of authenticity. Even approaching her eighth decade, Mrs. Drennan is still at the top of her game.

One possible deterrent to reading this book could be that it is available only on CD at the present time. Modern pedagogy tells us that students will only read eleven screens on the internet before they drift off to some other activity. And many of my contemporaries strongly prefer the 'hands-on book experience' to fooling around with downloading from the internet or the experience of staring into a monitor If tinted glasses are insufficient to make monitor reading pleasant, download the book into a three ring binder.

Mrs. Drennan is worth the extra effort on your part, since she has done hers. 'Everblooming Roses' remains evergreen 95 years later.