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Yes, the Rosette is quite an enigmatic nebula. It is huge, actually, but very faint, with no real prospect of been seen from urban areas - it really needs a dark site.
However, you don't need a big scope to see it. Binos will show its smokey ring around the cluster Malcom describes.
But with a scope, there's a few things that help. Low power, and a nebula filter. Rich field scopes tend to work best. A rich field scope is one that's f/5 or faster. A nebula filter will cut down the background sky glow and allow the wavelengths of light that the nebula glows at to be transmitted to our eye.
The larger the aperture the more detail will be revealed. In my big dob and using an OIII nebula filter, it somewhat resembles the iris of a giant eye with the cluster sitting within the dark "pupil". Quite beautiful. But like I said, faint.
Mental.
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