Great post. I'm happy to see someone mention one of my favorite roses, Flirtatious. She is still blooming her fool head off, and our nights have been dipping into the 40's. She smells great and is tough as nails, disease free, with a nice upright well foliaged bush.

Cup, It is lovely to see a post from you again. So you are back in the US. On your recommendations - will be sure to order Sweet Surreder. Hope it's other attributes are good also? I know, I have always been with you on the fragrance priority. "It is just as fragrant as f.ex." - I am stumped here. Which is f.ex????" Checked out both of these on HMF. 777 is a lovely rose also, but a little large for me at the moment. Must check out Midnight Blue also. Will save your post for future reference!

Nice to see you again.

Guess where I am "hoping" to be next summer for a couple of days! Copenhagen! Planning on going on a Baltic cruise. This will entail a preliminary two days in Denmark. I am so excited, but trying not to get too excited, in case we have to withdraw. Deposit is paid, but we can back out anytime up tp March of next year.

Anyway, great to see you again. Hope you are feeling well and that you are having a great time in the US. Assume visiting with your girl friend - how wonderful for you both.

Thanks again for the heads up on these roses.
Pauline - Vancouver Island

In the Northwest where Boeing is located the 777 rose is a leafless wonder. Great scent and nice color but if it ever had more than five leaves at the same time it would be a rare sight.

Lance

Sweet Surrender came here last year as an own-root from Roses Unlimited. I saw it for the first time in the fragrance class at the Richmond Rose Show, and I was instantly smitten. She's been trapped in a pot until recently, but has done amazingly well under the circumstances.

Connie

P.S. It's good to see you back, Niels. I was wondering about you just the other day.

Sweet Surrender was the first rose I bought when I started growing roses 6 years ago. Although virused, SS is a vigorous and hardy HT here. Fragrant with lots of big blooms. The bloom form is somewhat different, less formal than the typical HT. Truly one of the classics:

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Pauline, F.ex. is the Danish abbreviation of for example, like e.g. so Niels compares the scent of Sweet Surrender to that of both The McCartney Rose and Frédéric Mistral.

If you do go to Copenhagen be sure to visit the garden of the Rosenborg Castle in the center of the city, and if you can manage it, to Valbyparken, a show garden with modern roses. It is still in Copenhagen but not in the very center.

Yep, never ceases to amaze me that roses like Bewitched and Sweet Surrender have gone almost to oblivion. But dropping in on a few meetings of the local rose society helped me understand. Lots of rose enthusiasts want a perfectly round, high-centered rose with a pinpoint center-- and nothing but. By those standards these roses are ugly. Sigh.

Hello, Cup, nice to hear from you again! I've been wondering where you've been. Lovely post; now you've made me add 777 and Flirtatious to my HUGE list of spring orders. 777 sounds like a lovely rose and worth the smell alone to grow.

Artemis, how big does Flirty grow? Some of the pics on HMF show it to be a striped rose and some are more a blend. What is your experience?
-terry

Hi, Cup.

I agree, Sweet Surrender is one of the most delicious modern roses, and the sexy name fits it perfectly. But my own-root plant lacks vigor. Does Harry have a grafted one?

Niels, I LOVE roses but it is also great to hear from you! Hope your work is going well and you are fine.

Carla

Michael, if you find a grafted one I hope you will share that supplier.

Carla

Sweet Surrender was an AARS winner back in 1983, so it does have a pedigree. The blooms do have great color and fragrance. Sounds like it's worth trying again.

I can vouch for the outstanding fragrance of Sweet Surrender. I think it should receive the Gamble award for fragrance, as well as Pope John Paul II.

Michael,
My plant is/was grafted. It was purchased at a local nursery. It might have been a Star Rose offering. Unless this rose features variegated leaves, it is virused. It fights the virus well, becoming a large, well foliated and nicely-shaped HT. But, probably not suited for cuttings.

I think there is enough of the "Old HT" characteristic in Sweet Surrender to make it worth the effort to seek out a healthy specimen.

artemis_mo: Flirtatious really stood out from other floribundas. Blooming like crazy, good fragrance and interesting shades of colours on the mostly white flowers. And looked very healthy.

Pauline: Good to hear from you too! Mariannese is right: I meant to write e.g. She is also right about ValbyParken in Copenhagen, but I would also go see the nice garden in Frederiksdal, there are many great roses too. Best time is early June to mid July for seeing roses blooming here. Perhaps I can be your guide if you make it, since I would like to go see these gardens myself again. On another sad note - My girlfriend and I broke up :..-(( but we are still good friends.

Barbarag_happy: I like all sorts of roses. I do not let HT rose exhibitors be the judge about what a perfect rose is influence my choices. I probably prefer fragrance over bloom shape. Thanks for mentioning Bewithched.

Lance: the 777 rose I saw in SLC was very healthy with no leafloss even grown nospray. They do not seem to have BS problems in SLC. PM seems to be the problem for most roses there. Location, location, location as we say here on the forum.

Connie: Nice to hear from you too! Lucky you to have a sweet surrender!

Harry: great that you posted a picture of this Sweet rose!

TerryJean: I was not gone MIA, I replied to one of your post not long ago? Time flies! The Flirtatious roses I saw was about 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide. They were mostly white blend with light yellow and peach tones.

Carla: Too much work! Glad to be able to go on a little Vacation again. You really have to learn to graft roses Carla - It is very easy when you have rows of rootstock ready. By a strange "miracle" I now have 5 Sweet Surrender
grafted yesterday on multiflora seedlings in my propagation garden. I could have sworn I would never do this, but I am just imperfect and irresponsible. At least no soil was carried here and I only used the budeyes and burned the canes. Heck I will even pay the royalties on the plants that make it if needed - it was introduced in 1983 and is OLD! Kind of make me feel Antique, even though my birth certificate says 1969. LOL.

michaelg: I totally surrendered to Sweet Surrender! At leat that was how Bob Bauer said!

Phil_Schoor and Curlydoc: you are right. Sweet surrender was an ARS selection and I agree - It really deserves A Gamble Award for that fragrance. HMF says it has good disease resistance too.

Bob Bauer the rosegarderner I visited was a great guy and he has a webpage about roses:

Here is a link that might be useful: Bob Bauers Rose Website

Niels, that would be the icing on the cake, or, as one of our guests said in our guest book, when we had the B&B. I think he was from Holland,(will check) but you may understand what he means. He said staying here, was like picking the raisins out of the cake. My husband and I looked at each other when we read it, and thought, that does not seem like a nice compliment, yet we knew they were really enjoying their stay. I could not help but query him about his comment and he said that people love to pick the raisins out of the cake and eat them, so YES he said, that is a big compliment! So I liken it to being the same as "the icing on the cake". heehee! Our daughter hates raisins and picks them out of the buns, scones, etc

Sorry, I know, I am off on a tangent. But want to say how thrilled I was with your offer, not just to be guide, but to even meet up with you. Being a guide at the gardens IS the icing on the cake. Thanks so much for the offer. I will e-mail you.

Harry, thanks for posting that BEAUTIFUL picture of Sweet Surrender. It is a must have. So far did not see it through my regular source of suppliers! Will keep checking.

Marianne, thank you so much for interpreting Niel's post for me. Too funny, I thought that was a strange name for a rose! Also thank you for recommending the gardens to me. It will be really neat if we did get to see them with Niels. Wow!

BTW Niels. We probably will be in Denmark around 24th/25th of July next year. So that will be a pretty good time for the rose gardens, right?

.......SIGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
............Pauline
PS, I just went back through our guest book - always nostalgic and emotional and this was the comment.
"Thank you very much Pauline and Alan, this B&B was like "picking out the raisins out of the cake"! We felt like King and Queen? What a wonderful, lovely place to stay? D&T J, Switzerland
Pauline-VI

......I know, sorry to be so-off-topic!

I have Sweet Surrender because my mother wouldn't stop talking about it. I bought it just so she would stop nagging me. It is extraordinary! Mother knows best.

Where on earth do I purchase the 777 rose? I fell in love with it at a memorial rose garden in Colorado. I suppose I could drive to Oregon to buy it. I have done crazier things. It would be nice to have it shipped to CA though. HMF lists it as sold by Reagan nursery, but it isn't listed on their website.

Thanks for the list of fragrant roses.

Neils, I found your blog by accident a few months ago. I was searching for a rose on Google and your blog popped up. Amazing, amazing photos. I was absolutely enchanted. The picture of Spirit of Freedom made me keep my pathetic plant. I got one flower this year. It was worth it.
Eileen

Naughty Niels, importing rose canes with no license. Succumbed to the temptation, did you? ;-) The descriptions sound very nice! Hope you have pictures in the Gallery.

Pauline, in Holland you 'pick the raisins out of the porridge' although it sounds very weird in English, LOL! According to the more fluent english speaking dutch people, it is the typical mistake of the not so fluent to literally translate dutch sayings into english and not being able to 'sense' something is amiss. There are many funny examples. One famous example is: 'We haven't got the problem under the knee yet', which was allegedly uttered by a dutch politician who, when he was addressing the European Parliament, insisted on giving his speech in english instead of dutch, because 'all the dutch speak english very well' and so did he. But apparently, he did not. It is said that, when the other European politicians did not understand why he was trying to put some problem under his knee, they demanded him to speak dutch and use an interpreter, thereby humiliating him. It's an urban legend of course, and teaches us always to be modest about our foreign language skills.

Being the raisin in the porridge means your B&B stood out from all the rest. Not having the problem under the knee yet, means you do not yet have a solution to the problem.

Rob

Funny how we stumble over and interpret different ididomatic expressions when interacting with people living in different cultures! I am sure your guests enjoyed staying with you Pauline. It is interesting to meet people from different parts of the world. I sure hope you make it to Denmark, the roses will be at their best thse days, unless it rains of course! Thanks for your kind Email.

Thank you for the kind words tinyrose! I sure enjoy writing about roses and gardening on my blog. Hope you will be able to find a 777 rose. It must be growing somewhere - perhaps you can ask Bob Bauer for some cuttings you can root, even though I do not know if the rose does well on its own roots. Glad to hear you are able to enjoy the fragrant flowers of Sweet surrender.

Yes Rob - I fell hard! I can resist anything but Tempatation! But made sure to follow safe procedures. But yes I know it is illegal to do it. I will refrain from bringing whole plants and soil. I am sad to say that I did not take pictures of these roses - there were so many other roses I had never seen before that I could have been there many more hours if I had to take pictures of them all.

Grafted 'Sweet Surrender' is available from hortico.com
on R. multiflora rootstock. The shipping date is T.B.A., to be announced, so I'd order one now, if you're interested.
I've been happy with the roses I've purchased from them.

Lux.