A glorious problem, though, Melissa. Makes planning a joke sometimes.

Specific nurseries tend to list the average sizes of roses as grown in the area and the climate they are servicing or they just copy from sources that do so... However HMF relies heavily on the input of its users. So, if you have some first hand info about a specific rose, share it at HMF. I'm sure the volunteers there will oblige by updating the rose 'specs'.

Nik, I have done that and they do oblige. But I'm wondering this year of great plant growth, is it just that my roses are bigger than anybody else's? Am I growing them differently? Don't laugh! Mainly it's that I hate to go and put in notes about a lot of roses that offer corrections to the current information. It feels I'm saying You're wrong you're wrong you're wrong you're wrong...and that could become wearing for them, certainly for me. For example, my plants of 'Maiden's Blush', 'Blanc de Vibert', 'Archduke Joseph' (which HMF already sized up on my input once), and 'Fantin-Latour', are all significantly larger than the dimensions stated on HMF.

Sheila, correct, and correct. The entire garden needs a huge, daunting haircut right now. But the roses are magnificent, as good as I've ever seen them (last year was also a memorable year).

P.S. In my first post, I meant 'Paul's Himalayan Musk'.

Melissa, I feel your pain! I also have to say how beautiful your garden is from when I saw pictures a couple of years ago. It was magnificent then and I can only imagine what it must be like now. Yes, you definitely have a green thumb, however, I too wish the rose descriptions were a bit more accurate for something with weather other than that received at the south pole during a northern hemisphere summer.

I purchased a DA rose, Princess Alexandra of Kent. Website states 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide. DA states it is good for "pots and containers." I got it on its own root (assumed slower growth). First year I had it, it grew over 12 feet tall! Yes, I know DA's tend to grow bigger in my area, but three times as tall the first year? On own root? I cut it back to less than a foot tall the second year and I had canes over 14 feet tall by the middle of summer! Good for pots and containers? Seriously?

I just got Paul's Himalayan Musk sent to me by mistake. The rose I had thought I had purchased was going to stay in a pot (it is a mini). When I noticed the flowers and size were not quite "right," after only having it a couple of months, I sent a notice to the nursery. When they ID's the rose and told me what it was, I was like "back away from the rose...." and immediately gave it to someone at work who owns a large farm so it can happily spread many, many acres to its heart's content. I call it the "House Eater" rose!

Maybe if there was something on breeder's websites or even on HMF that broke the roses down by zones (e.g., 4--6, 7--8, 9--10) and the size they get in them, it might be helpful. Sunset Magazine has had to do that for the western states of the US as everything grows so differently here than in the north eastern part of the country. Most of the plant info prior to doing that was for that region and not for those of us living outside of it. I don't think it would be difficult to do, for at least DA roses, since he has test gardens located throughout the world and they are all in different climates. Jackson Perkins has their rose growing area about 100 miles south of me, so I know, that they know, how big their roses can get. I also know that doesn't help you for your antique roses right at this second, but overall, I don't think it would be that difficult to do. Especially since there are so many master gardener's, such as yourself, who are in various zones and regularly contribute to the HMF website.

Now, of course, is where I ask for pictures of your lovely garden and "problem child" roses for this year. They have to be magnificent!

Melissa, this is one of my favorite things to complain about. Rose books, HMF, nurseries, they all seem to just copy from some database which was compiled in England and the North Eastern US. So, cool, damp, cloudy weather, or where it freezes solid in the winter and the plants die back.

The only roses which do not exceed their "stated dimensions" by AT LEAST 100 - 200% in my garden are some of the old polyanthas, and some miniatures. I have gotten so used to it that I just ignore the stated dimensions, or laugh at them ahead of time. I do admit that I tend to let the roses grow to the size they think appropriate, but sometimes I have, like you, planted a rose somewhere where I was not contemplating it turning into a climber, or a huge mound.

Just one example. Years ago I planted the old hybrid musk Pax in a fairly (for me) formal bed in the front of our house, right below the front porch (which is one story above a ground level basement). Even today, HMF says it might get to 8 feet, and 20 years ago (when I actually expected roses to do what they were "supposed" to do, and stay where I put them) I was using an estimate of 3-4 feet from somewhere. It was growing in about 2 hours of sun, with dappled shade from the canopy of an 80 ft tall oak tree. Well, within the first 3 years Pax had grown up to the top of the 8 ft. wall behind that bed, leapt up from there over the front stairs which go up to the front porch (my DH had to build it an arch to arch over the stairs), and then proceeded to climb up the wall of the house to the bottom of the third story!

So, now I try to warn newbies who live in moderate or warm climates NOT to rely on the sizes stated (I think that is part of the problem - they never say anything like "3-4 feet in England, but might get to as large as 20 feet in a warmer climate", they just state the estimated size flatly).

Jackie

Mustbnuts, PAoK 12 ft high? Yikes!! I have 2 of them on Doc Huey. They are in pots and already 6ft. now a few branches are closer to 7ft. They have benn cut back a few times. Now I wonder just how large they will get..if I put them in the ground after initial root growth, then what lol!! I have found they are good in pots, however, they would have to be eventually giant pots. These suckers have already grown through the pots and into the ground. These 2 and my 2 Teasing Georgias both did that and I tried with all my might to pull up those pots but not happening lol. So they will have to be dug up. I just got them last spring :/

I am finding many roses go insane here too...and before last year, I used to think I couldn't grow Austins in FL. Now I think you can't stop Austins in FL or any other warm place for thst matter.

Oh, how I long for that "problem.." do you have pictures? Here in zone 4 not too many things get much larger than expected...many times I am lucky if the roses return after a particularly harsh winter. Then again I have a tendency to push the limits. ..

Melissa - that is GORGEOUS! Please, please, go back out and experiment with your camera some more!

Jackie

I'm consumed by jealousy since the drought has stunted everything, and growth was nothing to write home about in the first place. How I long for a single inch of rain to give my roses the will to live and grow. That picture is gorgeous, Melissa. I see it wasn't sunny, and that really is the secret, because that brings out the colors beautifully. That is a stunning rose. If I had even one exploding rose I'd be doing a happy dance.

I can imagine how you feel, Ingrid, and I understand at least vaguely how lucky we are here. The last few years have been a halcyon period for all the garden, and I'm trying to store up memories for when this time ends, as sooner or later it will. And so will things change for you, and certainly one can hope, for the better.

Jackie, thanks. I really do need to continue to experiment. The camera is a Samsung, and while it's no fancy instrument, I would think I could get better pictures if I just knew how. The definition in that shot is poor, the color is off--foliage is too blue, though I think the rose color is about right. I can't get whatever is needed to suggest depth and separate masses in the shot. Also I suspect the photo is overexposed, though I tried every light setting the camera offered. It doesn't show distinctly here, but I also took several pictures of 'Maiden's Blush', and every photo came out with white, not pink flowers.

Melissa, I think everyone here- and at HMF- realizes that those size estimates are frequently off. And without feedback from growers, they will continue to be off. It sounds like your 'De la Maitre' isn't overgrown or out of control; you pruned it, and it seems to be a good size for that plant. Unless you have strong doubts about the ID, you are doing gardeners who might purchase 'De la M' a favor by letting them know that it can get quite large in ideal growing conditions (even if those ideal growing conditions exist only in your garden!). Very useful info.

If you do have serious doubts about any rose ID, you can phrase your comment to reflect that, and European buyers can be alerted that what's in commerce may not fit with the original descriptions. Feedback from actual gardeners is an extremely valuable commodity.

Thanks,

Virginia

I love the fullness of the packed plantings. It reminds me of the Bibury in the Cotswolds. One man's trash is another man's treasure. One mans weed is another man's flower. I am tired of the American manicured gardens and have been intentionally letting some of the weeds grow in my gardens. I am very happy with the results. Typical English garden (Bibury):

Typical American plantings:

Both are attractive, but the English garden is more beautiful IMO. This is food for thought and in no way intended to sway your own personal taste. It's just that mother nature is a pretty good gardener.

Ummm, that is not a typical American planting. Maybe a landscaper's recommendation to a bank or something, but no yard around here looks like that. We may not be British, but we have better taste than that.

Well, it depends on which part of America you live in, lisanti07028. The sparsely planted garden with lots of space between plants can be found in many yards in California, these days minus the lawn (replaced by gravel, mulch, or even bare ground), given drought and water restrictions. It is, in any case, rather difficult to create the British look out here. There is no rain between April and October. Purchased water is expensive and it's practically impossible to do packed plantings using drip irrigation. To do the "British look" here without using exorbitant and immoral amounts of water requires more plant knowledge and fiddling than most homeowners have, or care to have. As a result, the norm in these suburbs is isolated plants on targeted, automatic irrigation that any low-knowledge "mow and blow" garden services business (also the norm) can maintain. There also seems a current fetish (enabled by the advent of the leaf blower, perhaps) for making a garden resemble the orderliness and cleanliness of a living room...

I loved the dense look of my Massachusetts garden (too much water and too much plant density more the problem there!), and have been working and experimenting literally years for ways to create that look in my current garden. Appropriate low-growing Mediterranean and native species with low or no water requirements can be used on the edges and in between roses. I also employ weeper hoses so that less drought tolerant filler plants can be sited along those water sources. Finding plants that will do this kind of design well is the most difficult part, as they are not the typical fare in local nurseries. The other hard part is keeping obnoxious, overgrown teas and chinas, who also resent pruning and whose stated dimensions in published sources are frequently laughable in this climate, from overgrowing all your "meticulously planned" drought-tolerant cottage garden plants. :-)

The sparse mulch gardens are very common here, especially in more recently built neighborhoods. We have some cities that are exploding and they look exactly like the picture.

Mustang Guy, the first picture makes me very happy and the second depresses me. catspa is right about the reasons why, and the green grass of the second picture is only a dream in droughtland here. I struggle hard to keep everything alive in my unmanicured country garden, and without even a semblance of your English rain there would be nothing but a few sunbaked weeds in my garden if I didn't irrigate. Instead I have roses that struggle to grow and bloom on the water I dole out, with increasingly less success.

Love the first photo!

One of the better neighborhoods in the metro area I live in. Walk around and see what I mean about American plantings: Greenmont Hills

Not American, Midwestern. There is an obsession with 'neat and tidy' that is rather amusing to an outsider. The bit about not letting plants touch each other borders on truly funny. We've seen enough of it in Pittsburgh, where I have family, that it is a running joke. It started as a xeriscape concept from further west - give each plant exclusive rights to the water in a given area surrounding it. As it moved east, it just became a style. Fortunately, it hasn't spread to around here. Weeding all that mulch would deter anyone.

..I think it's rather an unfair comparison with those two photos... the first being an old row of cottages in a touristy location, probably occupied by resident old ladies who have the time and inclination to cottage garden, which suits the location.. I expect the homes are probably cold and maybe damp issues, with small rooms.

...the homes at Greenmont - which I think are rather nice actually - I expect are occupied by busy families and just want something easy on the eye and to maintain.. I notice at one property they have 3 people in doing the front garden, which amounts to raking up some leaves...

...you see some of this here too with modern new build housing estates.

...this google map link is in a little village called Alfriston, East Sussex, England, near where I lived at one time... it's considered a picture postcard village at the base of the glorious South Downs National Park, but as you can see in these more residential streets, older properties, but front gardens not too dissimilar from Greenmont...
Kings' Ride

Mel, thank you for posting pictures. I just love your garden and the pictures are wonderful. Such a beauty! I think your camera shots are just fine. Love the roses and the plantings.

Mustang Guy, I had to laugh at your pictures. Yes, I can see how you might think that. Not all of us have gardens that look like the second picture. However, there are a few around. Mine looked like that (for about a minute) when I newly planted my yard (minus those types of trees and bushes). I just know anything I plant here will get bigger than the stated size (back to the original thread here), so yes, I do give it a bit of room because I know things will spread. The mulch, for me helps to keep weeds in check and helps to keep the ground moist (or as moist as it can be when it is over 110 for days on end).

Unfortunately as Ingrid and others have stated, a lot of what is passed on as "gardens" here is nothing more than weeds in various shades of brown and dead. Since many of us are only able to water once a week (and not at all from Nov--April). Many have chosen not to water at all, period, for the past three years. We don't get any rain, (usually from about May 1st until November), so things are bone dry and dead and have been that way for the past three years. I hate it and I am surprised that some of those houses have not gone up in flames (all it would take is one lit match and it would be an instant incinerator and the whole neighborhood would be toast) or that the city/county hasn't gotten after those folks.

Mel, I just love your garden. Thank you again for posting those beautiful pictures. That was so thoughtful. I would love to see more anytime you are willing to share.

My pictures were to make a statement, but they do represent how I felt when I returned last summer from a holiday in GB. I wanted to plant roses, so I drove all over my city looking for inspiration, and all I found was this cookie-cutter gardening like the second picture. I could not find a single place with beautiful roses like I had seen in England. I am sure this is partly because we are in 6B, and a lot is because people just don't have time or care enough to make true beauty. It's cultural as mad-gallica may have been implying. My photo's aren't fair comparisons either. I admit that.

I remember on our first trip to the UK and realizing that even the lowest priced homes were tidy. Here in West Virginia, there are so many beautiful drives, but it seems around every corner is a house with a junk heap in the yard.

Here is what I don't understand. This region was settled by English and Scotch-Irish, and is still 90% that. Why then, don't they live like they do there? I was once told by a man that his father told him to "never get rid of anything you have acquired".

I don't mean to hijack your thread, but I wanted to give some background as to where I am coming from. I am aggravated and embarrassed about where I live. The people are mostly great and friendly, but they just don't seem to know just how ugliness can depress others.

I have noticed a funny thing here regarding plants which are recommended by 2 different parts of the government. The funny thing is that the recommendations are opposite! The "save all water at all costs" part of the govt (despite the fact that our county has plenty of water, and has for the past 4 years - we did have a drought in rain for the first 3, but our reservoirs non-the-less captured enough water anyway) likes "drought tolerant plants". These include all sorts of things which are full of resin, and burn like pitch soaked torches.

The FIre Departments, on the other hand, who are worried about wild fires, like "fire resistant plants", and recommends keeping the garden area near your house WELL WATERED! So, I just opt to obey the Fire Department.

Jackie

P.S. As you know, I have a garden which is packed with plants all merged together - it is my opinion that, if you are not a perfectionist, and let the plants mostly do what they want to do, is EASIER to deal with than one of those with lots of empty space and a few plants far apart.

Haha, I agree with Jacqueline. I have a nasty north facing hillside, and instead of trying to keep mulch and weed it, I've planted tough, vigorous plants which compete with each other so hard the weeds just can't get a foothold any more. The mainstays are ornamental grasses, black eye susan and pink coneflowers and daisies, with gaura, self-seeding dianthus and mint in the lower tier and pink evening primrose (which is amazing) completely filling all the gaps. This is the first year it's really come together and it's just glorious. The primrose is essentially a weed, it spreads like wild fire, but everything else is too tall for it to shade out. I generally don't have to water, fertilize, or feed it, it's like an organized meadow.

That sounds glorious ! You will have to post pictures! !

Not good to go to extremes either way, I'm thinking. While I am mostly inclined to let a rose get as big as it wants and will try to accommodate that, even if I did start out thinking it was going to be much smaller, there are limits. Some folks are neither willing or able to fit a 9' tall and wider Comtesse du Cayla or a 15'+ wide Mrs. B.R. Cant on a suburban lot and even I had to call it quits this year with the imperialistic inclinations of Etoile de Lyon at 16' wide and Francis Dubreuil/Barcelona at 10' (both with pruning!). Rarer, more interesting (to me) roses needed their spaces, so "sic transit gloria mundi" for those varieties in this garden. On the other hand, having, say, only 10 or so humungous teas covering all of the backyard would "simplify" things considerably... ;-)

"Letting plants mostly do what they want to do" has it perils, exhibit one being the current state of my mother's garden in Santa Rosa which has shown, as Melissa notes, how infiltration of weeds can turn a pleasingly disheveled situation dramatically worse in short order. With the reviving rains of the past season, Himalayan blackberry and Impomaea indica, lurking among the plantings but previously held in check by the drought, have run totally amok and swallowed practically the entire backyard within just the past few months (Festuca arundinacea, burly and obnoxious, has claimed a lot of the rest). Pretty much everything is going to have to be removed, I think, to regain control at this point. In arid Livermore (which even in normal years only gets 1/2 the rain that falls in Santa Rosa), that is not likely to happen, but I still keep an eye out.

Marin County's water situation may be more fragile than you think, Jackie. During the past season, though a lot of us in NoCal got 100%+ of normal, your area received only 55% of its average annual rainfall, which means that trees, shrubs, perennial herbs are likely starting the dry season with soil moisture deficits and may need more irrigation to get through the summer in good shape. Also, 25% of central/southern Marin's water actually comes from the Russian River watershed in Sonoma County (Lake Sonoma), not the overflowing Marin County reservoirs. Fortunately, Lake Sonoma also did well this past season (despite Healdsburg only getting 57% of normal -- what was it with these weird dry spots this year?!), but should Sonoma County stop exports to your water district during a shortage, there would be an immediate loss of 25% of its supply. When it comes to water in California, we're all connected.

Spec, you've got a great ecological competition experiment going there -- I can't wait to find out who wins in a couple of years! :-)

Catspa, a ten foot Francis Debruil/Barcelona! Do you have pictures? Mine is fairly short still. It arrived as a band last year and has been one of the slower growers. It definitely seems like a hybrid tea, very vertical, sparser foliage. I've seen it listed as 3'.

Only photo I have, Spec, is here, three years ago, when she was approximately 6' tall and around 8' wide. In the intervening three years she stayed about that height, but the main canes spread even wider. I had tucked her into this little space near my berry patch (note berry canes reaching in from the right) thinking she wouldn't get so large...wrong again! This was the beginning of her second flush, June 26, 2013.

Amazing! I really love full shots of the plants integrated into the landscape. What's your care regimen, in terms of soil amendments, feeding and things of that nature? Various sources suggest FD likes to be babied a bit more than some other roses.

No babying here. A few cupfuls of alfalfa pellets in late winter, which is all any of my roses get -- that's it. I probably incorporated a cubic foot of compost or so into the planting area when she got planted. Soils here are gravelly clay loams and adding some compost seems to help the transition from pot to ground. (Assuming there is topsoil -- much of my yard is subsoil, the topsoil being scraped off to make a level spot on the hillside for the house, some 45 years ago -- but I think there was some semblance of topsoil where FD was.)

catspa_NoCA_Sunset14 - just to clarify, I saw the same statistic you did for Marin rainfall this year, but it is WRONG. I knew it was wrong, so I checked other sources, and they all agreed we have gotten 28 inches YTD (rain year - 7/1/15- to date). I am sticking with the Marin Independent Journal data, which is our local newspaper, and if they were that far off they would hear about it. 28 inches, assuming we get no rain in June (which is not unreasonable), makes it about 80% of average, which is why I say we are not having a drought this year. The Russian river is also not having a drought this year. Of course, that could change again, but I do not believe in borrowing trouble - have enough trouble without borrowing any.

Jackie

Well, that's good to hear, Jackie -- I wonder how those strange stats got in that data set? The figures for Livermore and Santa Rosa are accurate. So, may likely be that odd amount for Healdsburg is not right, either. Eighty percent surely better than 55%, any day, especially for the sake of the wonderful large trees and roses you have in your garden.

Yes, the Russian River is doing good this year. Be that as it may, as you say, a full reservoir this year guarantees nothing for the future. For one thing, the expansion of the economy and the constantly exploding population growth of Sonoma County, which is likely to increase even more once the SMART commuter train line is in place, will draw even more heavily on Lake Sonoma in the future. This is why I think that considering the amount of water being used by a garden will become more critical even in the nearer term in this wider region (disregarding long-term stuff like climate change entirely) and even without much drought. Same kind of population crunch happening here in the Tri-Valley. Even if we have the same amounts of water, by historic standards, there are going to be many more people using it, and scanter, poorer landscapes overall, unless water-conserving garden design can rise to the occasion. And the fire department guys will have to stop giving irrigation advice...one wonders where THEY have been during these past several years!

Ho ho ho, catspa, I have all the thugs you list, several showing the imperialistic tendencies you describe. (Not 'Barcelona'/'Francis Dubreuil'. I wish.) You're perfectly right about the weeds and brush. Annual wild plants in the beds are fine for the most part, but we spend our lives fighting off our neighbors' invading brambles, wild plum, elm, thistle, artemisia, and so on; and several obnoxious perennial grasses that like to get in under the roses. In the established parts of the garden I don't weed much, but I spend a lot of time shearing.

Someone wrote here on the forum, "Water is the best fertilizer". Certainly nutrients matter, but we have our apparently mineral-rich clay, with years of organic detritus on top, and have had several years of mild temperatures and good rainfall, and the roses have grown like mad. Fertilizer, in these conditions, is just not called for; nor do we water our plants after the first year. We don't have what is conventionally considered good soil. I do try to dig good planting holes.

So, mustbenuts, catspa, I, and I suspect many other gardeners in favored places, have roses that grow vastly larger than the sizes stated on HMF. And Virginia's right that this is useful information for people who are looking for roses who live in these conditions. How about a campaign, where we all add information to HMF? I'd like company for this.

A final note: was the Midwest populated by Italians? They're maniacal about tidiness too.

LOL, Melissa! Being half Italian and half Sicilian, and having my great grandparents/grandparents (on the Italian side) move to Wisconsin, yes, I can vouch that many of them settled there! Don't ask about how I am fanatical about cleaning my house--apparently I get that from both sides but in particular from the Sicilian side. I am doomed! However, my garden resembles a "tidy" garden but only re: the removal of weeds and deadheading roses, fertilizer and compost, oh, and mulch. It doesn't look a thing like the pictures someone posted earlier. It very much as an English flair but with more water tolerant plants (other than some of my roses). Oh, and with a drip system too. Have to conserve water since we can now only water twice a week and it is supposed to get to 109 degrees for a few days. Then we cool down to 104 for one day.

Here is the hillside, about a year after we moved into the house. As you can see from the shadows, it's a decent slope and faces north-northeast (poor growing conditions). It was weeds and decaying creeping juniper. At this point we'd pulled out juniper on half the hill, added some mulch and got a few plants in the ground.

Here it is, in May four years later. It took a lot of trial and error, as well as just time for plants to mature. I think about half the varieties I tried here did not survive. I've settled on a pink and white palette, which adds yellow as the daisies give way to black-eyed susans. I only wish the gaura would grow better here, I think it's amazing mixed with grasses. The black fountain grasses and the pink muhly grass will put up beautiful seed heads in the fall.

And a month later looking up at the house, as the primroses start to fade and daisies take over (you can even see the coneflower starting to grow petals):

On the wings of the hill are daylilies, a deep blue-violet variety and a white variety with purple throats, flanked by Innocencia Vigorosa and Sweet Pea landscape roses. I'm not showing a wide shot because those two willow oak trees keep the invasive plants from really spreading into their root zones and there's a lot more bare mulch on the sides. If I could replace the willow oaks with smaller, less thirsty trees, I would do so.

Finally, I can never post without including Munstead Wood (colors true to life):

Gorgeous Spec! I love what you have done.

Nice to know there is another person out there that has pink muhly grass. I just adore it and try to encourage others here to grow it. So far, no one has. Stays low. Only needs to be cut once a year. Takes our heat and full sun. Drought tolerant. Throws beautiful, sterile flower heads in the autumn which are spectacular. Everyone comments and asks what it is. It is a great plant.

Beautiful garden. Beautiful design. Beautiful plants.

Melissa, I like the idea of your campaign for adding info to HMF. I wonder if it would be useful to start a thread for a particular rose to see what other growers are seeing size-wise? For example, I could start a thread asking how large, say, 'Rose XYZ' gets wherever people are growing her. If enough people respond, we might have a different and more accurate range of sizes than is currently at the record.

I don't know how many people grow 'Rose de la Maître-École' (probably not enough!), but a post asking for others' experiences might help you sort out if your experience is freakish or if it's more usual than the HMF description implies.

This post did prompt me to finally update the size description of 'Pookah' at HMF. My plant is in the 3-4' range and it's young and in a pot, but HMF had 12-18" as the height. After asking a couple of other people who have grown it, I updated it to 4 to 5'. It might get bigger still, but at least it is now a reasonable approximation based on several growers' experiences...

Virginia

Spectrograph, That Munstead is breathtaking. From the Austin website they looked like they would be burgundy colored. I like the actual color you show much better as it would tend to compliment my other plants better. I think I might order a couple next spring. I like that it states as hardy and old rose fragrance. Thanks for the picture!

Mustang guy, that is exactly what MW looks like in my Cincinnati garden. It holds its colour well although I only planted my as a bare root graft 2 months ago.

Mustang, mine changes through the life of the plant and the time of the year. I assume they are dark burgundy in the cooler climate of England. The first year it was mostly pink. This year it's opened red in the spring, aging to dark purple or magenta depending. The fragrance is one of my favorites. Also, mine (second year, bought bare root and I assume grafted) is throwing vertical canes about 5 feet high now.