I love how they just look so luscious. The cup form makes you want to bury your nose in them and inhale deeply. The colors also seem to scream "I smell good, come over here". As far as size goes and mannerly growth, it all seems to rest upon the individual rose. They ARE said to be quite hardy. I am a newbie to roses but not gardening and I am gathering steam at an astonishing rate,thanks to these knowledgeable enablers here.

"What else is good about them other than fragrance" you ask?

1. Most of them look more natural in the garden. They blend in with the other shrubs and perennials, and look like they belong.

2. Most of them are of colors that are not gauche. They are easy on the eyes and impart a relaxing attitude.

3. Most of them are long-lived. They do not "burn out" after a couple of decades like many hybrid-teas do. With a little care, they will be there for your children, and your children's children.

4. Many of them are tough enough to flourish on their own roots. They do not need to have the life support of another plant's roots to survive.

5. They are rich in history. For example, when you sniff a bloom of The Apothecary Rose, you are sniffing the same rose that a Medieval monk sniffed from his herb garden. Or you are enjoying the same fragrance that Shakespeare enjoyed and wrote about.

6. Many of them root easily, and can be shared with friends and family, so that they can enjoy and pass on.

7. They come in a wealth of shapes and forms and fragrances, not just the typical "upright three caned stick" form.

8. The bloom forms are incredible, with the focus being on the open bloom, rather than just a scrolled bud. However, this "old rose" look has now become so popular that the modern rose hybridizers have caught on, thankfully. So, these awesome bloom forms can now be enjoyed on some of the modern roses as well (much of this due to the leadership & creativity of David Austin of England).

Randy

Did you mean hybrid teas?

oops,sorry-skimming agin.lol

we rest our case.

There are 2 main attractions for me.
1) The teas and chinas fall into the OGR category. And none of my HTs even come close to blooming as frequently and non-stop as the teas and chinas do.
2) Instead of upright growth, the teas and chinas (my personal favorite OGRs) have twiggy growth and form into nice shaped shrubs. I actually plant HTs in between OGRs so that I get the bushiness of the OGRs and don't have to see those ugly HT stems. Also, you get blooms all over the bush on OGRs instead of just a few big blooms at the very top.
Case in point. Right now Valencia (a HT) is on her 2nd flush of the year. Valencia is the same color as Safrano(a tea), but Valencia's blooms are bigger. Valencia has 8 blooms, Safrano has around 50. Plus, Safrano has never stopped blooming since it started this spring. I love both roses, but Safrano gives me enjoyment every day of the year while Valencia is just when it blooms every 6 weeks or so.
Carrie

OMG,
Not only are the OGR flowers lovely, the leaves turn colors esp gallicas and species ones and then there are the hips! So much from one plant. And pruning is minimal.
Is that enough?
Sonbie

for me, it is the fact that the teas and chinas (and noisettes) are no-spray! Best thing since sliced bread, beautiful, smelly and easy to grow!

Old proves that they have survived countless different climates and soils. Emphasis on survive. Then usually they have something in their look and performance that sets them apart from the run-of-the mill.

And I'm beginning to accept that often they are only once bloomers. A natural cycle of plants. What is more boring than a rose that just sits there and blooms all the time looking the same. Now I've never even seen a Knock Out but from what I read it is an odd color, no fragrance and just sits there an blooms. More than one person has written about the fact that it lacks what posters about OGR's have mentioned, something special, how about beauty!

I loved what Randy said, so let me just add a thought or two.

OGRs are history, a part of history, found in literature, praised in poetry. They have become a natural part of life, and of our human family tree. Explorers brought them from the far regions of the world, pioneers brought them East to West. There was The War of the Roses. There is mystery and intrique, medical remedies and soothing soaps and salts to bathe in. There are perfumes with the essence of rose.

And they belong in gardens, not as stand alone plants or in separate beds, but as a part of the garden scheme integrated with peonies, geraniums, clematis, up fruit trees, around fences and gracing homes. They represent community, where as the modern HT seems to represent modern day non-communicative living.

Carol

yeah Carol, you hit the nail right on the head :)

Old roses have their plusses and minuses, and some characteristics can be both a plus and a minus:

Take the fact that many are once-blooming only. Now, many gardeners wouldn't like that, but I live in the Land of the Japanese Beetle. How pleasant to pass by Armide and Harison's Yellow in July and not come eyeball-to-eyeball with an orgy of JBs the size of a softball! In exchange for the fact that you get only one bloom flush, you get hundreds of flowers, all at once. In May and June, Ispahan is a veritable mountain of pink snow, so fragrant it perfumes the entire garden, petals everywhere, flowers in the air, flowers in the grass, flowers on every inch of it!

The perfume of the antique roses comes in many varieties: the damask, alba, rugosa, musk and, well, foetida, scents are all different and remind you of the different heritages of the plants.

None of my antique roses requires spray of any kind. None of them requires weekly applications of Miracle Gro. What they want is a shovel full of horse manure once or twice a year - that's it.

You won't recognize these plants. Clean leaves from top to bottom, lush, full, gracefully arching branches.

Beautiful and quite educational. Beautiful writings from many of you. Many thanks for letting me know what you feel from your hearts.

For me it is the flower form, growth habit, and of course fragrance.

FLOWER FORM - my biggest beef with Hybrid Teas is that they only look good while in bud. A few with extreme form (we call these "exhibition" roses) never completely open. Trust me, that is a good thing because when they do fully open what you usually get is a formless mess. Now OGRs on the other hand just get more beautiful as the blooms mature. There is just something so lush and buxom about these flowers that I love - kinda like the difference between todays fashion models and the movie stars of the 50s. Some men like bones and hard angles. I ain't one of em.

GROWTH HABIT - I'm a cottage gardener. I like my delphiniums every bit as much as my roses. Okay maybe a little less but I still like having other flowering plants in my beds. The stiff, upright growth habit of the HTs looks good in formal rose gardens but not so much in mixed borders. OGRs have what I call a "real" shrub like profile. They blend in better with the foxgloves, daylilies and such. I especially like medium to tall cultivars with gracefully arching canes (one of the reasons why I'm so ga-ga over REINE DES VIOLETTES).

FRAGRANCE - don't get me started. If I have to look at another prissy, fragrantless bright red rose ... that is all I'm gonna say.

BTW, you don't have to give up repeat bloom when growing OGRs. Haven't you ever heard of Bourbons, Hybrid Perpetuals, Portlands, Chinas, Teas and Noisettes? Yes you have to choose carefully because not all of them repeat well, but there are several tried-and-true standards that will statisfy any modern rose junky. Then of course there are the new "reproduction" (i.e. English) roses, perhaps my favorite group of all.

Image of THE PRINCE by Cup-shaped-roses posted at the Antique Rose Gallery.
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Forgive me hybrid tea and florist rose lovers out there, but to me the OGR is authentic, rich and natural as opposed to being overbred and sort of synthetic seeming as are many, but not all, HTs. They just look like nature as opposed to "man-made" to me.

Has anyone mentioned the names? OGRs have the most fabulous names. It's much more fun to refer to a Sombreuil instead of Tropical Whatever.

Excuse me for being annoyed at the posting of The Prince under a thread about OGR's. Now it is a beautiful rose but the point of this discussion is the virtues of OGR's many of which have the look and fragrance of The Prince and in the case of Charles de Mills a toughness and hardiness that all of the Austin's I've planted don't have. They are all dead.

But I couldn't agree more with Molineux's comments about the look of HT's. Now some of the newer ones look good at all stages of their development but the old ones mostly not. And they all that I've seen are mostly sticks as bushes. Besides I can't grow them! There are even worse than the Austin's when it comes to vigor and just plain survival.

Besides I like the look of most non HT's. Some of my favorites are singles.

A little off topic but had to tell you I also used to re-read "This Rough Magic" (and others by the same author.) I remember that part about the old roses! Her books made me fall in love with gardening, Greece, history and Shakespeare at a young and impressionable age. Just had to say hey!

Jim,

I posted the image because it illustrates the kind of flower form that I prefer. But since you are a "purest" here is an image that I think even you will agree is worthy of this thread.

Image of Félicité Parmentier (Alba, 1836) by Cup-shaped-roses posted at the Antique Rose Gallery.
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ooh, thank you for dropping names... My fingers just went scampering off to look up REINE DES VIOLETTES and Charles de Mills, both fabulous.

I do have to say, (with a smile) that I believe reproductions (Austins) such as "The Prince" and my picture above of the pink "Spirit of Freedom" do have a place in an OGR discussion. While they are not ancient in themselves they were directly bred from the ancients with the goal of offering OG type roses with improved disease resistance and repeat flowering; are they not? :) In my personal limited experience I believe they are successful.

Hey briosafarm! So glad to meet another Mary Stewart fan! I ate up all her books as a teenager and they gave me those same loves. So I wasn't the only one infected! :)

I fell in love with them when I was given the link to Paul Barden's website. How can you not love the graceful form and lush roses? I love close up shots of a rose....but it is the full rose bush shot that captivates me. Some great full shots can be seen on his website.

Go play!!!

Here is a link that might be useful: Old Garden Roses and Beyond

Here is another one that really enabled me!!

Here is a link that might be useful: Inspirational Beauty of Mature Old Garden Roses

"Has anyone mentioned the names? OGRs have the most fabulous names. It's much more fun to refer to a Sombreuil instead of Tropical Whatever."

*****

Not only the names, but they also seem to have personalities. Histories, names, and habits all combine into a sort of personality so that when people talk about them, it is almost like talking about a person. Comte de Chambord did this today. Mme Hardy did that . . . I love that they have personality. HTs are beautiful as cut flowers and I do have and like some floribundas, but they don't quite seem to have the same presence in the garden. And I want my garden to have personality.

Molineux

Lovely picture, I need to learn how to post pictures.

I would post, whoops I was going to say Robusta, but it's a modern rose. Sorry. Any way a brilliant red single. To show that I like all sorts of rose flowers.

But my original objection to The Prince is that this is one of the few places that you can learn about some obscure yet beautiful old rose. If, given the popularity of Austins, we include them, how long before they become the predominant topic here? Just because they look like "some" of the OGR's why does that qualify them as an old rose. They still have a couple hundred years to prove they have the stuff to survive.

I started with the Modern hybrids (that's all that is available in the box stores) and now I really have fallen in love with OGRs. I went to the Sacramento Cemetery Historic Rose Garden in April and purchased quite a few OGRs. Among the ones are (I just love this name!) "White Pearl in Red Dragon's Mouth" which is a darling red rose and just keeps blooming. Another one I purchased is McBride's Plot along with Theodore Roosevelt's favorite: Duchess Brabant, a pink rose. I also purchased Penelope, La Reine (gave to a friend) and Pink Mermaid. Here is a link to the many pictures I took there- among them are many OGR's grown in their natural state. I am told they are only lightly prunned and hardly fertilized.

http://picasaweb.google.com/maechandran/SacramentoCemetery

Molineux thanks for the pics. Felicite looks so splendid and well...yummy! My kind of candy. Carol and Malibu Rose your links are fabulous. I spent the last hour looking at the pictures now I canÂt get them out of my head LOL.
I enjoy reading your thoughts and connections to the roses and i must agree that a rose by any other name just be as sweet but such fancy names they have.

Who can name some absolute favorites?

Jim w ny, you say there are those tougher and hardier than Austins... Until very recently I didn't know there was something other than an Austin rose for this type. I love the idea of a rose hundreds of years old...

Just spent an hour reading Paul Barden's fantastic website (WOW), where would you even begin??

Okay then, so what are the very-top, couldn't-do-without-them, TRUE OLD GARDEN ROSES for specific locations

What a fantastic post----I should be in bed but I'm sitting here looking at pictures of these fantastic old roses---I remember about 40 years ago when I first got into roses---I only liked the so-called "real roses"---and then I found GW and learned to appreciate the old gorgeous blooms---
Speaking of wonderful stories ---Last year I was finally able to get Ghislaine de Felgonde-----named for a lady who rescued her DH from no-mans land during WW1----no one else would rescue him so she borrowed a horse and got him out safely---A rose hybrydiser (sp) was so impressed he named this rose after her.I have blooms this year and she is wonderful.

And of course Zephirine Drouhin-----from the Civil War era.

Randy and Carol and Patrick-and the rest-----I love your reasons for loving OGR's.

Florence

My first OGR was Rosa Mundi. To have a rose growing in my garden that may have been a rose named for Henry Plantagenet's beloved mistress Rosamund just blows me away. I am fascinated by the medieval, Tudor and Elizabethan periods. Sure, it may be all old lore, but I still think it's incredible.

Here's a really nice site about the 'Fair Rosamund.' It shows paintings of her with the famous 'bower.' Tells a lot of the old legends. It also plays really cool medieval music.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fair Rosamund Link

dear zeffyrose, I thank you deeply but my DH does not... I just finished sketching the arbor/trellis he needs to build over my front steps to accomodate Ghislaine de Felgonde...

I found this picture which "sealed the deal" and thought i'd share it on this post. I can't get the picture in, here's the link if anyone out there would like to check it out

Sarah

Here is a link that might be useful: Ghislaine de Feligonde

Florence I love your story. Zephirine is a very beautiful name.
Rhonda I apologize for mistyping your name with Carol about the great links you gave. My mind wasnÂt quite by itself after looking at those gorgeous pictures.
Tracy

Ronda!
I'm bad with names.

I'm with everyone else...

History (so MUCH of it!--it's why I own many of the most famous historical roses I can find; plus, they're lovely!)

Fragrance

Hardiness

Grace of bush

Beauty of bloom at all stages

and those gorgeous names! I've always wanted to sweep into a room and haughtily announce "Who am I?!? Why!, I am...the Madame de la Roche-Lambert!" lol

see my old pbase account if you need enabling...heh heh

Here is a link that might be useful: Some of my pics from 2005/2006

I read all the Mary Stewart books as a teenager too... more than once. Yes, OGR's have that spirit of romance and adventure about them. My Rosa Mundi is a riot of bloom now, and so delightful in a vase, though she has a very short stem. Thanks for the history. The striping is so delicate since it's two shades of pink. I guess the incredible petal count and fragrance of many OGR's does it for me, and their ability to turn into a magificent shrub.