Choosing Roses

Question from Cindy:
We are replacing some of our older roses and thought I’d ask your opinion on specific ones to buy! My thrust is fragrance and length of stem to use in arrangements (not floribunda.) I’m interested in fluted edges perhaps, I love a cabbage type of rose …. and really any color other than red. Suggestions?

Answer from Cindy:
Here are a few fragrant roses you might like because they are all fragrant and disease-resistant (except where noted):

‘Dick Clark’ this year’s AARS winner is a grandiflora with long stems, disease-resistant foliage and fragrance. Color is cream with cherry red picotee petals. Most AARS winners of last 10 years are amazingly floriferous, disease-resistant, and easy to grow. Most of them bloom non-stop in sun, but not many of them have fragrance. Reason for that is that fragrance goes along with genetics of the red and purple heritage of Mr. Lincoln, Double Delight, and other highly fragrant but mildewy hybrid tea and floribunda roses.

‘Just Joey’ (apricot with wavy edges of petals. Very good AARS rose), ‘Dolly Parton’ Grandiflora orange red with long stems (but gets diseases, Kniffings roses says people always buy it anyway because they fall in love with the strong fragrance and long stems), ‘Memorial Day’ (Orchid pink), ‘Scentimental’ (Striped red and white) It’s fragrant and clean, but a floribunda and not very long stemmed. I didn’t like the striped petals and tore it out. ) AARS Winner ‘Secret’ is excellent and fragrant, 2002 AARS (pink blend Hybrid Tea; it has 35 to 40 petals), ‘Yves Piaget’ is a fragrant Romantica rose. Deep pink. I know someone who has a whole row of these roses in her Rancho Santa Fe garden to use as cut flowers for the house. Not hugely long stemmed but utterly charming and oh so fragrant in a vase.

‘Fragrant Cloud’ (1970 orange red 28 to 35 petals.) ‘Fragrant Plum’ (mauve, 20 to 25 petals.) Many species, Old Garden Roses, and David Austin Roses are very fragrant. Fragrant Austins I like include: ‘Abraham Darby’, ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, ‘Graham Thomas” and ‘the Prince’ (I love it but it is deep, deep red). There are dozens more and always new ones coming along. A fragrant rose I grew and enjoyed was ‘Outta the Blue’ . It is a shrub rose but with long stems, less fragrant than ‘Angel Face’ (foribunda) but better, deeper color, more like magenta with a few cream blotches, and no disease problems as ‘Angel Face’ had. Another one is ‘Big Purple’. it has many petals.

One of the best roses I’ve ever grown for long-lasting use in a vase of mixed flowers was ‘Betty Boop’. (It lasts a week cut in the house.) It had no fragrance and didn’t mix with other roses, but just looked super in a bouquet of many flowers. It’s a many colored, wavy petalled, cream edged with red, pink, and orange, shrub rose with many single flowers on a stem, so does not fit your needs unless you need something for a flower bed away from the rest of your roses. Mixes well with blue, yellow, and white.

Here’s another idea: Rosa ‘Big Purple’ (Heirloom Roses)Extraordinarily fragrant. From New Zealand. (40 petals.) Ships in March from Heirloom Roses. Hybrid tea.