Scented Roses - what's your favourite?

the best way to select a rose for scent is to decide what kind of rose you want - as you've got Hessayon's book, you then look in the right section, say, climbers, check out the list and check the fragrance marking he gives. That's how I chose 6 small bush roses recently, by looking in both the floribunda and HT sections and selecting first for height, then for colour, then singling out the fragrant ones which fitted the bill. In case you're interested, I chose 2 Just Joey, 2 Korresia and 2 Fragrant Delight. I know the Korresia is fragrant, grown it before, but I have to admit that my favourite is Whisky Mac and probably Fragrant Cloud for fragrance.
And I must just add that I agree with you wholeheartedly - I'm not a great lover of roses (thorny, high maintenance, need constant spraying and feeding and pruning and deadheading) so they should at least be highly fragrant to compensate.

thanks, Bamboo. - I've gone thruogh the book with highlighter to mark my likes, based on scent and size, and later will go through the list and gradually refine it until I get it down to a reasonable number - with b ackups *s*

I doubt that many of the roses that people night mention will be suitable for my space - unless anyone says their favourite is one of the ones I've already marked, in which case I shall pay close interest.

But basically, I posted this question from sheer idle curiousity

I know Whisky Mac and Fragrant Cloud are in the book - but forgot to say the other thing to consider is disease resistance, very important as far as I'm concerned, so height and spread, disease resistance, colour and fragrance are the deciding factors. I didn't use Whisky Mac this time, although it was the right size, because its disease resistance is now poor, and Fragrant Cloud was the wrong colour and gets too tall... I'll be interested to see just how fragrant the Fragrant Delight is though.

nods, some of the "traditional" roses don't have as good a rating for disease resistance as some of the newer varieties - but then, a lot of newer varieties have lost scent as a side-effect? someone said once that roses put a lot of energy into scent production, so scentless roses will last longer - for what it's worth!

You're right, a lot of the newer varieties don't have scent, rather like the newer varieties of sweet pea - the first thing people do downstairs when the roses are out is lean forward and sniff the flowers, and most people seem to do that - yet, as you say, lots of them have no fragrance at all any more. I also don't like some of the modern roses because they have weak flower stems - they're always described as 'beautiful, nodding, flower heads' - 'nodding' seems to be a way of describing this fault.

I don't like what I call "overcrowded" flowers: the traditional beautiful shape of an open rose is lost in fold after fold of petals; the only aim seems to be to crowd in as many extra petals as possible - not only do they not smell like roses, they don't even look like them. sigh, I suppose that's what they call "progress"

Ha ha, you made me laugh - I particularly dislike that type of rose which you describe so well - Peter Beale's being one of the classic offenders as far as I'm concerned. The other problem is with the colours - they keep introducing new shades in roses and they don't seem to hold their colour, so peach, for instance, becomes pink within 18 months, and never a peach flower again... Not to mention the plethora of petals means bees can't get at any pollen they may produce...

nods, with no scent they'd probably not attract any pollinating insects close enough to be puzzled by how to get in! if they think I'm going to hand-pollinate my flowers ...

A lot of the sites I've found have, in their descriptions, "good for showing" - but seemingly not so good for growing!

Agree about the colours - there's a "blue" one which is actually a washed-out lilac, and might be okay under that description, but not "blue". And bicoloured, and striped, and ...

I want as near to natural or traditional as possible in all my plants; bluebells that are blue, roses that are rose-shaped, rose-scented, and the traditional rose colours. I'm after a harmonious whole, not a smack-you-in-the-eye novelty

beeb brwsing micro-mini roses, and found a site: the caption for these red-and-yellow striped roses says, and I quote exactly, "Fragrance: 0.5, slight scent, but who cares when a rose looks like this?!"

and that's official, apparently!

http://www.rdrop.com/~paul/minis/glowingamber.html

Well, I suppose its a good reflection of modern society - appearance is all that seems to matter these days, sadly, poor things.

sour laugh - indeed, it's not what you've got or what you can do, it's what you look like.

I accept that appearance is, and always has been, important - it's just it seems its the only thing that matters these days, and that has to be disastrous.

nods! I go a bit on looks, too - proper rose-shaped rather than fluffy pompoms, but it's not all that I look out for by any means. Still that's where we're at today - it's all, and only, surface show that counts.

Bamboo,I have had 'Fragrant Delight' for a few years now..and it is! Also very prolific, all summer and autumn..I hope you enjoy yours as much as I do mine..I took three stem cuttings from them,and they are now as big as the parent Rose..never had any problems with them..

My mother used to have one called Josephine Bruce that smelled wonderful but I haven't seen it listed lately. it was a beautiful rich red.

try Google, Steragram - it turned up 160,000 hits when I put "rose josephine bruce" in just now - I'd paste in the link to the Google page, but it's about half a mile long, so probably easier to do it from your end! then you can browse for the best deal

An old debate among plant breeders: which is most salable, fragrance or appearance. Fragrance is apparently less controllable in breeding than than color or form, so most breeders tend to concentrate on the latter. There is, however, a monetary prize for breeders of fragrant roses--the James Alexander Gamble Fragrance Medal--so look for more fragrant roses in the future.
That said, my personal favorite for fragrance is 'Angel Face', though most of the lavender roses have good scent to them.

Hmm, though I think the fragrance is important, I'd reject blue/lavender roses wholesale because of their colour - nothing worse than a sea of 'blue' rose flowers on dull, damp days in Britain, very depressing. And somehow, 'blue' roses look to me fake somehow, just not right - exception would be Veilchenblau, which I do like.

I just Googled for iamges of Veilchenblau, and wow, that's a colour that stands out at a distance

I also Googled for "James Alexander Gamble Fragrance Medal" - I'm going to hve to save this saerch so that I can explore the sites it lists - apart from the first two, that is, which invite me to play games of chance - took me a second to connect that with "Gamble". sigh