New Yorkers have two questions about pretty much anything. The first is "Does it come in black?" And the second is "How close is it to Midtown?" Maybe it's the answer to the second question that makes the Brooklyn Botanical Garden such a well-kept secret. It's in Brooklyn, fuggahdsake.that's in the country already. They should take a lesson. If it weren't for Brooklyn, New York would be well down the list of biggest American cities. If Brooklyn hadn't been co-opted as one of the five boroughs, it would now itself be the fourth largest city in the United States, behind New York as presently constituted, Los Angeles and Chicago. Brooklyn occupies the area of Long Island, down at its southwestern tip, that lies immediately across the Brooklyn Bridge from lower Manhattan. The 500-acre Prospect Park, of which the Botanical Gardens are a part, is just as beautiful as Central Park. Since it isn't the recreational space of choice for quite as many people as Central Park is, it is more relaxed. You can have barbecues there, for example, and dogs are allowed off the lead, in summer, in some areas, before 9 in the morning and after 9 in the evening.

The original plan for Prospect Park had it occupying ground on both sides of Flatbush Avenue, the long, straight road that comes off the Brooklyn Bridge and cuts all the way across Long Island.

The designers suggested that instead, it should be consolidated on the southern side of Flatbush Avenue. That was a sensible move. One large, triangular piece of land was left on the northern side of Flatbush, however, and that became the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, one of the finest facilities of its type in the world. Inside the Botanical Gardens, between the Cherry Esplanade and the Lilac Collection, is a long, slender piece of land called the Cranford Rose Gardens. It contains the largest and finest selection of roses in the United States - possibly anywhere. They are the reason I am a frequent visitor, especially at about this time of the year. It would take a great deal to persuade me that the human lives who is capable of disliking roses. They are stunningly beautiful plants. Almost nothing else in nature is quite so delicately shaped or so exquisitely coloured. They often smell so good they'd bring a raging prizefighter to his knees.

In the Cranford Garden, there are 5,000 bushes of nearly 1,200 varieties. That's a lot of blossom. Visually, their variety is overwhelming. And if you think a rose is simply a green plant with a red flower on a long stem, I have news. Take colour, for example. If you believe nature's palette moves in quick jumps from yellow to orange to red, Cranford Gardens will change your mind in a hurry. In Mr. Roget's excellent Thesaurus, red has many shades. There are scarlet, vermilion, cardinal, Post Office, carmine and crimson; cerise, cherry, maroon, carnation, magenta, damask, ruby and garnet; carbuncle, rose, rust, cinnabar, cochineal, fuchsine, madder, red-lead, Venetian red, and annotto.

The roses at Cranford will persuade you that even that list is mean and inadequate. There are roses of many other colours, of course, roses of two colours and roses that slide subtly from one colour, through another to a third, or a fourth. Most of them have that delicious dusky smell one associates with them. But you quickly realise, sniffing here and there, that there are as many different smells as there are colours. In the matter of fragrance, the language supplies a few words that are pretty, but a little arcane to those who don't mix perfumes for a living. Musk would apply, I suppose, of chypre I'm not sure, attar certainly, bergamot, balm, maybe not. but there is no doubt that there are nowhere near enough words to explain all the fragrances that roses possess.

A young boy at Cranford, trying to explain to his sister how a particular rose smelled, was forced into odd territory. First, he tried to get away with "great". Pushed, he said it was "sweet". Then, obviously feeling harried, he said "it's sort of sour and bitter together," and changed the subject. I smelled the same rose to see what he was trying to put across. he must have been desperate for a way to describe what his nose told him, and so would I have been. Once in a while, the names of roses seem to want to reflect their ability to astonish the nose - there is a handsome, flat, yellow rose called Rosa Foetida Persiana, for example, that strains to bursting point the capacity of the usual English definition of foetid.

There are other differences. Rose blossoms can be physically classified, by their shape and number of petals, as flat, cupped, rounded, rosette, high-centred, quartered-rosette, urn-shaped and pompon. They can be further classified by type. The 5,000 bushes at Cranford include wild species, old garden roses, hybrid teas, grandifloras, floribundas, polyanthas, hybrid perpetuals, bush roses, shrub roses, miniature roses, climbers and ramblers.

Some of the roses at Cranford come from Bermuda, for Bermuda roses are popular the length and breadth of the United States. They were brought to the Island from England, many of them in the early part of the 18th Century. The hardiest ones survived, and sometimes grow wild - there are still many wild roses in St. George's, for example. They are known in the US for their hardiness and their ability to bloom almost year-round. At Cranford, the roses are arranged in part according to their height, the tallest on the farthest sides, bushes and shrubs both in the beds inside them, and running down a large bed in the centre. Lest that should become boring, peppered here and there among them are pergolas and trellises and an arbour at one end for the climbers to show off on. The effect. all those colours, all those smells, all the blossom of those 5,000 plants together in one place.is, to tell the truth, so astonishingly beautiful that it is in constant danger of slipping, ever so slightly, over the top.

Down at the far end of this long finger of garden is a little trellised-off area containing a statue from the 1920s, formally called Roses of Yesterday, but known popularly as the Rose Maiden. It does depict a maiden, a slender little number dressed in a high-waisted nightdress and thonged sandals. With her right hand, she presses an armful of roses to her bosom - not a care, apparently, for the thorns. Her head is bent to the blossom, and her legs are pressed so tightly together (ecstatically, I presume) that one foot seems to have been forced out in front of the other. Her left arm holds a sundial out and away from her body into the sunlight in a gesture oddly detached from the action to its right.

The time the sundial tells is three-quarters of an hour adrift from Eastern Daylight Time. In any other setting, one would describe Rose Maiden as an overly sentimental piece of fluff only one step removed from a plastic flamingo. Somehow, though, she seems right for the place. As I looked at her, a few days ago, a family group consisting of mother, father and four little desperadoes, all of whom appeared to be. what's the worst age? Six? Eight? This quartet, I judged, were packing, at the very least, slingshots under their T-shirts. They roared noisily around the corner and stopped dead in their tracks. After a moment or two, gazing up at Rose Maiden, openmouthed, the four of them, without a word said, arranged themselves decoratively around her, two on either side, arms around her waist, and demanded their picture be taken.

It was the roses, sure as apples.

(The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, if anyone is tempted, are an easy subway ride from the City. On Seventh Avenue, take a 2 Train and get off at Eastern Parkway. Out of the station, turn left, walk a few yards and you're there.) gshortoibl.bm.