We’ve worked with our friend Ngoc Minh Ngo for years. She was a colleague of Yolanda’s at Martha Stewart, and Linda at Domino. Best known for her botanical and garden photography (her books include Eden Revisited and In Bloom), she has a luminous, almost ethereal style that gives her work a beautiful painterly quality. When we heard her new book, Roses in the Garden, was coming out (April 29 – preorder here!), we definitely wanted to know where around the world she had traveled to capture these beautiful rose gardens, and which of them are open to the public!
Can you share a bit about how your background and upbringing shaped your interest in roses?
I grew up in South Vietnam, and flowers were just part of our daily landscape—the flame trees that bloomed at the end of the school year, the peach blossoms that marked the lunar new year. I always thought of life in terms of flowers. But roses were royalty—the rose of my childhood was prized far above our tropical flowers, but did not grow in our garden. It was a flower for special occasions, bought from the market by my mother (though there are native roses in North Vietnam, which is more temperate). When my father planted his first garden after moving to California in the late 1970s, he made a rose bed in a sunny corner, mostly modern hybrid teas and floribundas in a range of colors—every shade of pink, coral, yellow, and red. Meanwhile, I fell in love with the story of The Little Prince and his red rose, from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book.
Years later, in 2008, near the end of my dad’s life, my father spent his last days in a room with a view of another rose bed he had planted. Every day, I would go out and check the progress of the roses, wishing them to open. But he passed away before they bloomed. Roses became associated with that period for me, and the fact that my father did not get to see them bloom one last time was something unresolved. When I returned to New York, I was doing volunteer work at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and discovered all of these beautiful rare specimens and learned about their horticultural history. I decided to start photographing them, and the rosarian would send me home with a bucket of roses each time. I would then spend the day photographing them and mentally having a conversation with my father. That led me to discover this whole world of roses that are special and full of stories. It was my experience of these roses and wanting to share them with my father that kept me going. My obsession with roses led to a desire to do a book about them. It took me over two years to photograph the 11 gardens that ended up in the book.
It is amazing how, as you write, that throughout history—“painters, poets, botanists, scholars, mystics, emperors, as well as humble gardeners from all corners of the world” have been captivated by the rose. Why do you think roses, of all flowers, attract so much mythmaking and ignite the imagination?
First, it is one of the oldest flowers in the garden. It’s been in cultivation, some would say, for 7,000 years. China was probably first to cultivate them, but you see roses in ancient Egypt, and the Romans were very extravagant with their roses. They used them for many different things—rose chaplets were worn to celebrate military triumph; a rose was placed on the forehead of the departed and on graves; the emperor Heliogabalus infamously smothered his banquet guests with a shower of rose petals. Roses were cultivated for medicinal purposes in the Middle Ages. So they’ve been part of human history for a long time. Then there’s the beauty of the rose. You could ask, why do we find it beautiful? But we just do.
So if they were cultivated and adapted across time and place, do the rose varieties wind up reflecting something specific about each culture?
The history of roses is the other thing that explains their popularity. Roses are endemic to the whole of the Northern Hemisphere, north of the Tropic of Cancer. There are native roses in America, native roses in Europe, and native roses in Asia. There were also roses that came from Persia—roses are a big part of Persian culture and important in Islamic gardens: think of the history of perfume and rosewater; it’s said that white roses grew from the beads of the Prophet Muhammad’s sweat; and there’s a whole tradition of literature having to do with the rose. Until the arrival of the Chinese rose, which blooms repeatedly throughout the season, the roses in Europe were once-blooming. In the late eighteenth century, they were hybridized with the Chinese roses, which created whole new classes of roses, resulting in most of the roses that we have today. So now people think of roses as sort of roughly three different groups, within which there are different classifications. There are the species roses, which are the simpler, five-petal ones, like those in Botticelli’s “Primavera.” And then there are the “old garden” roses—gallica, damask, bourbons—the classes of roses that existed before 1867, the year that a rose named ‘La France,’ arguably the first hybrid tea, was created. The third group of roses are modern roses, which includes all the new classes of roses created after 1867, such as the hybrid teas and floribundas, among others.
So going back to your question, the Chinese roses are notably repeat-blooming. There is also another class of Chinese roses called the tea roses, because when they were brought to Europe, people thought they smelled like tea. The old European roses have that old rose scent, like the damask rose they grow in Bulgaria to make rose perfume. Or, for example, the French have another rose called the apothecary rose (or provins rose), which is a gallica. There was a whole industry based around this one flower, which was used in medicine and made into jam and other confections.
The English are also known for their roses. The rose of Shakespeare is the sweetbriar or eglantine rose, known botanically as Rosa rubiginosa, a wild rose that smells like apple, especially after the rain. The rose breeder David Austin created a whole new class of roses known as English roses by combining qualities of the modern roses, like repeating-blooming, with the form and fragrance of old roses.
Since we’re a travel magazine, I’d love to ask you about the gardens you so beautifully photographed in your book. For the ones that are open to the public, would you share a bit about their origins and what’s unique about them/worth visiting?
Yes, a few of the gardens in the book are open to the public.
The Giardino di Ninfa, in Lazio, Italy
The Giardino di Ninfa, about 43 miles southeast of Rome, is mythical among garden lovers around the world. It sits on the ruins of a medieval town, which was abandoned in the 14th century due to conflict and malaria. The site was transformed into a romantic garden in the 20th century by the Caetani family. Drawing inspiration from English-style gardens, they planted a range of exotic and native plants among the crumbling ruins. The garden flourished under the care of Lelia Caetani, the last of the noble family, who helped ensure its preservation. If you love flowers and gardens and romance, I highly recommend it.
Rohuna, Morocco
Of all the gardens in the world, Rohuna is closest to my heart. It’s on the opposite end to Ninfa in a way, a much humbler garden with a wild beauty. I first set foot in this extraordinary place, in the countryside an hour outside of Tangier, in May 2015. My friend Deborah Needleman had introduced me to its owner, Umberto Pasti, when I was looking to document people with a passion for flowers. A plant lover with a collector’s mania, Umberto has filled his garden with plants from all corners of the world that can tolerate the raging heat here, as well as his beloved wildflowers of northern Morocco. It’s an incredible setting, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. But it also has a very particular mission, created to preserve the wild flowering bulbs endemic to Northern Morocco, which were in danger of extinction. Many of the gardeners who now tend the garden are the sons and nephews of gardeners who built the garden thirty years ago. Generations of local children have played, learned, and grown up in the shelter of this oasis. By appointment: Mohammed Errami at mohamederrami22@gmail.com
Hortus Conclusus, Alcúida, Mallorca, Spain
The Hortus Conclusus at Sa Bassa Blanca Museum is a contemporary interpretation of the traditional medieval enclosed garden, blending Moorish, Mediterranean and monastic influences. Created by artist Ben Jakober and collector Yannick Vu together with the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, the garden was designed as a serene, symbolic space, with more than a hundred varieties of ancient and modern roses. It’s always evolving, because of the changing climate. I spoke to them recently, and they’ve had to make changes as it’s gotten a lot drier in Mallorca, and roses need a lot of water. It’s part of the museum here, which is open to the public and contains an unusual collection of portraits of children from the 16th-19th centuries, African masks and prehistoric fossils, and contemporary works by Louise Bourgeois, and James Turrell.
This garden in Sakura, just outside of Tokyo, is renowned for having many different gardens, one of which is dedicated to the history of the rose. Traditionally, roses don’t have a big presence in Japanese gardens. So that’s why this garden is special, because it wasn’t until the 19th century when Japanese traveled to Europe in larger numbers and brought back their appreciation of roses to Japan. In the 20th century, Dr. Seizo Suzuki fell in love with roses and decided to devote his life to the flower. This garden is his legacy. It gathers roses from different parts of the world—there are collections from a French garden, an Italian garden, roses that were bred in India. It celebrates the rose, but also the friendships that are made among people who are passionate about the flower in different places.
Where else can a rose-loving traveler seek out incredible specimens/rose gardens?
Any garden you go to in England, you will see beautiful roses. I was talking earlier about old roses, but when the new roses came, everyone went crazy for them, and they kind of neglected the old ones. But fashion comes and goes. So in the 1950s, Graham Stuart Thomas, who was a nursery man, and people like Vita Sackville-West, were passionate about roses and very keen to keep them alive. Vita Sackville West wrote extensively about old roses, and in her garden at Sissinghurst, in Kent, there are exquisite roses. If you go there in June, there’s a whole garden “room” devoted to them. And Graham Stuart Thomas had an incredible collection of roses, which he donated to the National Trust and are now at Mottisfont in Hampshire. So for rose lovers who want to get a quick education in roses, these are the two places that you can go to and see a huge variety of both old roses and species roses and some of the most beautiful roses, really.
Today, the Europa-Rosarium in Sangerhausen, Germany, holds the title of the largest rose garden, with 8,300 cultivars and species, including nearly all existing varieties of certain classes—polyanthus, hybrid perpetual, Noisette hybrids, and ramblers. In Italy, the Fineschi Garden in Tuscany holds some seven thousand varieties, collected over a lifetime by the surgeon Gianfranco Fineschi.
June is the best time to see the roses in England, France, and Japan. For Morocco, it’s early May, and for Mallorca, it’s late May.
What is your favorite rose and why?
It’s hard to have just one favorite. One I do love, partly because it’s beautiful and it’s been painted by so many people, is a sport, or a mutation, of the apothecary rose. The apothecary rose is this deep pink, almost purplish magenta color, while the sport, called ‘Versicolor’, is white with red stripes. It’s a very striking rose that was painted by all the best botanical painters – Redouté, Ehret, Mary Lawrance, and many others. But my favorite illustration of it is by Peter Withoos, a Dutch painter.
Then there’s the ‘Charles de Mills,’ which is another Gallica rose that is full of petals and a deep purple, magenta color and very fragrant.
And there’s a China rose I love that is also very consequential. In China, it’s called ‘Yue Yue Fen’ (meaning the monthly rose). This rose was brought to England and Europe, where it’s known as ‘Old Blush’ and was used in the breeding of all the modern repeat-blooming roses today. It’s so beautiful. It looks like the kind of rose that you see painted in Chinoiserie; it’s so iconic, and very delicate, with petals that are a dark pink on the outside and a lighter pink on the inside.
Do you ever press and/or dry roses on your travels? If so, can you share your technique?
I always try to, but I usually forget to bring my press. So I always end up putting flowers and leaves in books. I mean, it’s difficult to press flowers that are too thick, so I always tend to go with the single, five petal roses that are easier to press than the big ones. And then I’ll forget about them, and when I pick up a book and something falls out, it brings back memories. But there’s no trick really; just always have a book!
All these years later, what was your takeaway from the rose in St Exupéry’s Little Prince?
So in the book, the Little Prince has his rose, and it’s very high maintenance, as roses tend to be. He then travels to other places to learn about things and he ends up on Earth, where he develops his friendship with the pilot. While here, he comes upon this whole hedge of roses. He’d thought his rose was so unique, but then he finds it is identical to hundreds of roses. In the end, it is his love for his rose that makes it unique. He says something that has stayed with me all my life: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur.” In other words, one can only see the important things with the heart. So when the Little Prince looks at the sky at night from earth, “all the stars are blossoming,” because the rose he loves lives on a star. And when the pilot looks at the night sky, since the Little Prince will be living and laughing on one of them, “it will be as if all the stars are laughing.” Put another way, we all see things differently because of the love and meaning that we invest in them.
Photos reprinted from © Roses in the Garden by Ngoc Minh Ngo, Rizzoli, New York, 2025
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