Nice selection Civil.. I have both roses you want... PAOK is a work horse in my zone.. always pumping out blooms.. My GJ is in its first year in my garden so far I like it. I agree with Karen Olivia Rose it is a good choice and has good repeat blooms. Another nice pink rose is Queen of Sweden.. good repeat for me and smells pretty too..

I have a Love hate relation ship with my GT..when she is good she is great..very stingy with her blooms I have FOUR..I had to move all to the back garden as I had to pave my front yard waiting to se If they survived. Honestly no rose comes close to the fragrant blooms when you get them but she is really thorny . I hear Jude the obscure is great for fragrance as well..sorry I got side tracked..back to your question try Geof Hamilton or Mary rose- very good repeat bloom for me in zone 5

I have PAOK and agree she's a great DA rose. I just got my Olivia Rose, and the color of the blooms is exquisite. Time will tell if she is one of the best. Other excellent DA roses I grow and recommend are Munstead Wood, Golden Celebration, Tamora, and Evelyn. These are a few of my favorites. Diane

What about some DA ramblers?

Olivia rose is very pretty, and mine has been blooming non-stop, but for sheer beauty of blooms, leaves etc., I am beginning to wonder if Queen of Sweden is actually better. O.A. Is new... so the verdict is still out.

Lots of love for Olivia Rose! Thanks for the suggestions so far. Should I just stick with a garden of pink roses or should these last 2 roses be a different colour?

Try deep, velvelty wine red (Munstead Wood, or golden yellow (Golden Celebration), apricot (Tamora or Evelyn, plus others). Don't just do pink. That's my advice. Diane

Maybe Lady Emma for apricot? I heard it has a very strong fragrance. I am also tempted to get Tess of the d'Urbervilles too if not Munstead.

Munstead wood is a lovely rose and prolific with a long flowering season and fragrant. Shape is lovely and the velvety petals are gorgeous.

Young Lycidas is also sinfully fragrant and covered in flowers all the time. This one also has very few thorns.

Even though I love Gertrude's fragrance she does not repeat well for me at all. She is also covered in thorns. I would have shovel pruned her if it wasn't for her fragrance.

Munstead looks amazing. I wish it were taller though. It seems quite small.

While zones are important, with roses east to west location is equally important. Generally, the further east you are, the higher the disease pressure. In my part of the world, almost all Austins require a spray program. Further west, some will be fine, some won't be. Local advice is always best, but if you don't tell us where you are, we don't know who is local.

I also would like some help to choose some David Austin. Saturday I'm going to visit a garden center. I contacted them and they told me they have Darcy Bussell, Princess Alexandra of Kent, Winchester Cathedral, Munstead Wood, Port Sunlight and Graham Thomas. I don't know which one I'm going to buy. It's so hard to choose only one. I really like Port Sunlight and Princess Alexandra of Kent. If you could only choose 1 DA, which one would you buy from this list? Which one is a good repeat?

Thank you!

Darcy busell does really well here, almost always in bloom, PAOK has a nice full pink bloom but doesn't have the same great growth and repeat, however I have only had them 2 years. No experience with the others..

MW repeats better than PAOK

Munstead Wood is a blooming machine for me. It's one of those roses that will stick around in my garden for a LONG time. I also grow PAoK. Although I really like the blooms on PAoK, it is a little slow to repeat and doesn't produce nearly the amount of blooms per bloom cycle that MW does.

Munstead Wood is an awesome rose especially when it gets those purply blood red tones. I also love the colors on Lady of Shalott and Jubilee Celebration and Evelyn.

LOS-sometimes she's more orange, sometimes more coral but she's always smashing! Ok I just edited this to add that LOs is not all that fragrant. Its her only fault lol. The fragrance is there but its light.

Jubilee Celebration

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Olivia Austin

Queen of Sweden

How fragrant is Tess?

I love pastel purple and pink, and probably fall into the trap of overloading on these. But yellow looks great with pink, and Charlotte looks to be a particularly vibrant yellow. Add some magenta with Falstaff for a neony pop against the soft and feminine pink. But if you're strictly into the pinks, Olivia Austin Rose, which Karen mentioned, seems to be the Rolls Royce in that range.

Constant Gardener.. i get a light fragrance to my nose.

Wow! You all have shown some wonderful roses!!! I'm really looking forward to Munstead Wood's 2nd year here.

If I were to get one more Austin, it would be PAOK. I really want that rose!!

For the original poster, if I were you and only planning on TWO new Austins, I'd pick two Olivia Austins. She is a combination of pastels--white and pale pink--just the contrast you need with your darker pinks. White also tends to bring out the colors surrounding it. I'm thinking about how all those would work together.

That said, if a person is only getting ONE Austin, then there is no question: Munstead Wood! It is near perfection--and not that short. Mine is reaching 3x3. But who cares when it has such swoon-worthy colors.

Actually, if I were you, I'd drop the Gertrudes (she is a real pain to deal with) and just get two of everything else: 2 Munsteads, 2 Olivias, 2 PAOKs. Mix and match them--would make a wonderful sight!

Kate

I know Gertrude has a lot of thorns but why else is she a pain to deal with?

How is the fragrance on Olivia Rose compared to Munstead?

Evelyn and Brother Cadfael are amongst some of DA's most fragrant roses:

Evelyn has the prettiest Austin blooms, IMO.

Carol

I've bought 'Olivia Austin Rose', 'Princess Alexandra of Kent', and 'Geoff Hamilton' - I'm really attracted to the cabbage-like shape (I don't know what the correct term is), and I love the rose/pink colour range.

I also bought 'Munstead Wood' for my mother on mother's day, but the very next day, it looked pretty miserable. We gave it a few days more, with plenty of water, but it seemed to have gone into a death spiral. We took it back to the garden center to get a replacement, but all of their 'Munstead Woods' now looked withered and frail. We ended getting our money back. I was a bit surprised, as I was of the impression this was a strong rose. All their other roses looked healthy, except for the 'Munstead Woods'.

I have a bench in the middle and then around 16' on either side. All of this is against a fence. How should I arrange all the roses? I definitely want some climbers like Gertrude right next to the bench so that I get surrounded with flowers when sitting.

Gertrude Jekyll is very thorny, you may not be happy sitting very close to it. In my garden setting it's not a climber, but is 5 feet tall.

Munstead Wood is compact and a good bloomer. It's hardy and repeats well, wonderful fragrance with a note of blackberry.

Lady Emma Hamilton is compact as well, with wonderful fragrance that's a mix of tangerine and perfume.

I added Olivia Rose Austin to the garden this spring, but have not yet seen it bloom. It looks beautiful in pictures, looking forward to seeing it in bloom.

Evelyn, Bishop's Castle, and The Alnwick Rose have awesome fragrance.

In my no-spray garden setting, the Austins get blackspot and drop their leaves.

A pic of Lady Emma Hamilton in the background with Mme Isaac Pereire:

Munstead Wood

Evelyn

Wow!!! Your MIP is fabulous!!! I also love the look of your Evelyn - gorgeous!!!

Carol

Munstead Wood is really fragrant here. If its blooming I can smell it before I see it. It kinda wafts when the breeze and humidity are right here.

Would Olivia Rose look good at the end of a darker pink hedge of roses?

I Would suggest roses with few thorns next to the bench such as Young Lycidas or Brother Cadfael or Windermere. You can easily sit amongst these roses and not get shredded. Leave the thorny ones further away from the bench.

Thanks for the suggestions fragrancenutter. But I just love GJ and it is at my local nursery for much less than ordering it from DA. I guess I will have to learn to train GJ well!

Ooh!!! Sultry - that s ounds awesome!! I'd love to have a rose that wafts!!

Carol

Unfortunately. Munstead Wood is one of the thorniest roses in my garden other than The Mermaid lol. She's well worth it but if one is a person who can't stand thorns then she may not be the rose for them.

Darcey Bussell is my favorite red DA rose. It remains compact (here in Z5), has abundant bloom, excellent repeat, hardiness. I grow Munstead Wood too, but hate the thorns, the growth habit is sprawly, bloom production is good but not as good as Darcey.

I just went out and bought four GJ today. Still can't decide between Munstead and Olivia though.

I adore my Munstead, it is well over 5 ft tall (I have only lightly pruned it in it's 3 years here in my garden) it is grafted though so I don't know how much that could affect size, I have a baby own root that is very small but has been growing and blooming like crazy this spring. MW is a great repeat bloomer & has a strong floral fragrance, resists blackspots very well for me ( & trust me it has a lot of opportunity for BS) but it sure is thorny! I don't really mind it, until it's time to deadhead, but it is probably my thorniest rose. Here is mine last week & the week before:

Olivia rose looks like it will be a shorter, rounder shrub, I picked a grafted one up from the same local nursery I got MW from, it had a few blooms on it at the time that had a mild old rose fragrance & lovely petal arrangement. Pinks aren't my favorite, but if this one is as healthy as I hear and reblooms as much as MW I will be a very happy gardener. Here is Olivia rose upon arriving home from the nursery:

Good luck!

Jessica

Jessica - is your MW on a structure or does it hold that shape by itself? Beautiful!!

I, also, bought Olive Rose Austin, and I'm looking forward to how it does too!

Carol

I wish the Munstead Wood I bought for my mother hadn't decided to commit suicide - it's so beautiful! I'm very happy to have ordered Olivia, though - I absolute love that flower shape, not to mention the frosted pink colour!

I had a Firefighter that did that last year - never even got a bloom.

Seems we have a lot of people that ordered Olivia. We should get a good idea on how it does in a variety of areas/zones.

Carol

I have Olivia in South Florida. So far so good. Its grown to be a small but very dense bush. The flowers are very pale warm pink. They are not cool pink/lavender like you see in the catalogue for me but a lovely shade just the same and with great form. So far no disease whatsoever. I have high hopes for this one. Now if only I could get it on Fortuniana.

It's probably not going to get very big here - I would love it if it would get to 3 feet like HMF says...but...probably not with our short summers. But you never know!

Carol

Carol, the little trellis is mainly for the clematis, of which there is one on either side of MW. I've found Munstead to be a very sturdy & upright on its own, it seems to want to branch through the trellis, & I just let it.

Jessica

That's good to know - don't really need another floppy Austin. LOL

I know that's right!! I have more than enough myself!