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Favorite garden links: rose fragrance, diseases & pests, fertilizer

strawchicago z5
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago

I ran across this enjoyable link on rose fragrance, see excerpts from below link:

http://www.oregonlive.com/hg/index.ssf/2015/06/when_choosing_fragrant_roses_t.html

"I vividly remember one day over a decade ago at the display garden at Heirloom Roses nursery in St. Paul. I rounded a corner in search of this utterly intoxicating clove fragrance and spotted the source several yards away: a towering, magnificent specimen of the single-petaled white musk rose, rosa moschata. Just last fall I planted a baby moschata when I saw it unexpectedly become available from a favorite rose nursery and I imagined enjoying that heady fragrance from my front porch. I was suddenly obsessed, even though I had not smelled this rose in nearly 12 years."

"Don't get me wrong. I grow and love Gertrude Jekyll and — in spite of her poor disease resistance — her damask perfume never fails to make me swoon. However I am quite taken with roses with unexpected fragrances like apple (pale pink climber New Dawn); cinnamon and apple (coral pink floribunda Everest Double Fragrance); apricot (yellow tea Lady Hillingdon); banana (white hybrid tea Queen Mary II); lemon (mauve grandiflora Melody Parfumee); pepper (white polyantha Little White Pet); raspberry (red climbing hybrid tea Etoile de Hollande); or dirty gym socks (white Austin shrub Glamis Castle.)
Officially, Glamis Castle is characterized not as dirty gym socks but as an example of the myrrh fragrance: anise, spice. Like patchouli, myrrh can polarize: often you love it or you hate it. I once overheard a woman emerge sputtering after a deep sniff of Glamis Castle, "Eeewww, that smells like a dirty diaper!" Since I have my fill of dirty diapers as a mom of 2-year-old twins, I prefer my myrrh softened with top notes of fruit (apricot Carding Mill) or distilled to the essence of pure licorice (pale pink Sceptre d'Isle.) I am infatuated with pale pink myrrh-scented climber The Generous Gardener. Austin characterizes its scent as among their very best offerings as "delicious aspects of Old Rose, musk, and myrrh.

The Austin catalog identifies some 20 roses from its collection as "most strongly fragrant" including: Gertrude Jekyll, Jubilee Celebration; Jude the Obscure; Lady Emma Hamilton; Munstead Wood; Princess Alexandra of Kent; Strawberry Hill; The Generous Gardener; and Young Lycidas. Several international societies offer awards for roses deemed most fragrant. The American Rose Society's James Gamble Fragrance Award primarily selects hybrid tea roses (including fragrant favorites like Fragrant Cloud, Double Delight, Mr. Lincoln, and Tiffany.) The Royal National Rose Society's Henry Edland Award for fragrance is awarded in Britain." Dennis Peck|dpeck@oregonian.com

**** From StrawChicago: Below is a bouquet of fragrant roses. My favorite scent is yellow Golden Celebration, smells like cupcakes from the oven.

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