Top 5 Roses for Fragrance Variety
When we first began growing roses in our garden, we had no idea that there was such a variety of scent profiles in various roses.
My first experience into this fascinating world of unique rose fragrances was with one of our first David Austin Roses, called 'Jubilee Celebration' English Shrub Rose. At first, I picked it out due to its shape and color, but as it began to bloom the fragrance became one of my favorite aspects of this rose: a strong lemon element mixed with rose.
As we began to add more David Austin Roses to our garden, we discovered same new and amazing fragrances that we didn't even know were possible. 'Lichfield Angel', a nearly-thornless climbing rose will produce a lovely, clove fragrance from its golden stamens for about day during its blooming cycle, in addition to it's light, musk fragrance.
'St. Swithun', another David Austin Climbing Rose, has pink blooms in June which change to more peachy-pink at September's end. It has a lovely and unique 'myrrh' fragrance that smells like sweet licorice. While you can buy scented roses in the flower shop year round, we really miss this one during the winter months.
Similar to the lemon-scented Jubilee Celebration, 'Pope John Paul II' Hybrid Tea Rose is one of our favorites for beauty and its strong, citrus-rose fragrance. The thrips seems to love ours, but when we do get nice blooms, they have a gorgeous high center and spiral blooms.
A survey of rose fragrance would not be complete without the Old Garden Roses. I first experienced 'Rose de Rescht' at the Point Defiance Rose Garden in Tacoma, WA. The rich, intoxicating fragrance of this Portland Damask Rose haunted me for months after my visit. The Damask roses smell like cracking open a bottle of culinary rose water.
The last rose in this installment is 'Fantin Latour' Centifolia Rose (Old Garden Rose) which is fairly new to our garden and bloomed beautifully this last summer. It's strong 'Old Rose' fragrance had almost a boozy note to them. I planted it right across the path from our (also new) 'The Wedgwood' David Austin Climbing rose and I can't help but wonder if they're related.
We'll be sharing many more blog posts on rose fragrance in the future. If you'd like to be notified of future blog posts, please sign up for our newsletter.
