It has been my experience that fragrant roses are most fragrant planted in groups or grown as enormous plants. I can't do this because I like to try as many as possible in a tiny space. So I have to smell the flowers one by one, as it were. Or brought indoors. I have Golden Wings, for example, which Helen van Pelt Wilson and Leonie Bell raved about, and I have never detected much fragrance from my specimen. But walking in Longwood Garden years ago, I experienced a powerful, delicious fragrance emanating from three large bushes planted in a corner of the garden at some distance away from me. (When I went back a few years later, they were gone, alas ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). Similarly , when visiting a Long Island nursery (it was Hicks) on an intermittently raining spring morning at a nursery I was delighted by the powerful fragrance coming from a row of potted plants of Rose de Rescht lined up for sale outside beside a bench. And I returned on subsequent days and they were still fragrant. My third memorable rose fragrance experience was at the Bronx Botanic Rose Garden, where a corner was planted with large specimens of Raubritter and Ispahan planted together. What a combo! And I think I went back on subsequent years to smell them. (Haven't been back in many years). I might as well add something from husband's and my trip to Venice some twenty years ago. There was a planting of -- I am almost sure -- Mermaid, that thorny beast -- trained up a very tall entrance doorway and growing horizontally across the entire second floor of an old building. (Those antique buildings have very high ceilings and tall, imposing doorways). You could smell the flowers from the next block, a very distinctive fragrance, somewhat unrose-like, and you wondered what it could be. It was amazing. How did they do it ? It was growing in a container and some gardener had skillfully trained it with love and skill to grow vertically about 12 or 15 feet up and then sideways about 20 (or more) feet, with all the flowers at the top in a brilliant yellow stripe across the building's second storey, as a way to deal with the thorny growth, I guess. It was a horticultural triumph.

Michael G. If this bush were a typical neat and tidy Hybrid Tea or floribunda, what you say is correct. However, it is a messy gallica that spreads by suckering. There are 25 (or more) canes. There may be 2 to 3 (or more) rosebushes? I have found suckers that send up shoots 1 to 2 to even 3 ft away from the parent bush. I see the top shoot, dig down about 6 inches to even 1 foot and I pull and pull. Sometimes the root breaks off and sometimes I cut the root. If cutting, I know the root will grow back. I used to save them, but began throwing them away, as too many. On the surface layer, on top of all this, hips drop with seeds. I let many hips form - bright red/orange, round balls. Sometimes I collected hips in Nov, but I left some. Ann Peck in TN suggested, "At eight to nine years, I'd expect that the many pollinated hips would have dropped and you might be seeing a seedling. Good dense roses can drop seeds that don't get eaten, especially if the hips don't drop until early the following spring. (Winter and fall hip drop feeds rodents in my gardens.)" Therefore since the bloom is very different from r. gallica officinalis, with which I started at the beginning, I think I have a new rosebush. Someday, if needed, someone can dig up the rosebed and perform an autopsy, to check which roots go with which bush. That will be a big job! The bush is (bushes are) very dense and the roots underneath are tangled and tough. (Photos must be low resolution - under 61 kb - so it is hard to see, but here is the rosebush.) Kathy Here is a link that might be useful:

Hi Carol R. gallica Officinalis has about 20 to possibly 30 petals. It is not a single, but it is not full either. Further, it is dark pink/almost purple. I bumped up June 1 photos with a closeup and a distance shot of parent bush r. gallica Offic. A rosarian friend said this sport/hybrid has a lighter color and it has so many petals, he did not think it was a sport - but perhaps a naturally pollinated hybrid from Compte de Chambord (nearby bush) and r. gallica Officinalis. There are so many suckering canes from r. gallica Officinalis, it is difficult to see if it is a separate bush - need to dig them up and untangle the roots? I probably won't do that for a while. Kathy

Very nice Kathy!