St. Cecilia is a wimp as own-root (bought it twice from Roses Unlimited as gallon-size). It died once in my zone 5a, and now very pale & small as 2nd-year-own root. Mary Magdalene is more vigorous, and scent is better. I succeeded in rooting many out-of-patent Austins to donate to charieties, but I won't root St. Cecilia.

It's best as grafted, rather than own-root.

Interesting, thank you for the info. How large does your Mary Magdalene grow?

My Mary Magdalene is a 12th year own-root. It's always at 2' x 1.5'. It's a constant bloomer so it stays short. Right now Nov. 16, I have a few Mary blooms in a vase, and it has the best scent among my 150+ fragrant own-root varieties.

St. Cecilia is floral and myrrh (like a cross between Queen Nefertiti's scent and Carding Mill's myrrh). Mary Magdalene scent is a class in itself, it's a mystical frankincense that no other rose can smell like it. It's very prickly & drought-tolerant so I don't root it unless I get special request. It's hard to root a drought-tolerant rose in a humid & wet rooting box.

It's elation and of tremendous comfort to sniff Mary. It reminds me of a cozy fireplace in the winter and of incense burning in Catholic church. My alkaline clay makes Mary more white, and I don't get blush pink color unless cold weather or kelp or biochar fertilizer. Below is to compare the size of 2nd year own-root Mary with Marie Pavie. As a 12th-year own root, it's twice bigger (2' x 1.5') but still compact.

Blooms are button-hole, safe to sniff when I have allergies:

Below fall bouquet showing W.S. 2000 on left, Mary center, and Radio Times on right. All 3 bloom through frost in November, zone 5a: Same with snapdragons flowers in bouquet.

Below to show pale St. Cecilia, gives 1/20 the blooms compared to Mary. St. Cecilia is so wimpy and pale as own root. Three other people have the same problem with St. Cecilia as own-root. Note the pale leaves.

St. Cecilia always break out in blackspots after blooming, but I never see blackspots on Mary Magdalene in the 12 years growing it as own-root.

I consider Mary's blooms to be prettier than St. Cecilia, plus better scent and better health than St. Cecillia in below pic.

I got my grafted St. Cecilia from Hortico who does ship from Canada in the Spring.

A couple years ago Palantine sold St Cecelia grafted, I would watch their website the next couple of seasons to see if there is any indication they will do it again.

When the site opens back up you could also call or email

Freedom gardens will.propagate it, and many others. http://www.combinedroselist.com/freedom-gardens.html

K and M has it listed under AUSmit and is grafted on fortuniana. Mine is from there. A few years old. Healthy and blooms all the time. Fantastic, strong myrrh fragrance.

There's a very good reason some of those early Austins have been discontinued: some of them are real dogs. I remember attempting to grow 'Country Living' years ago! OMG what a horrible rose that was. It never exceeded 15" tall, it rarely flowered, and when it did, the blooms were malformed, tiny things with a broken profile, barely open and a drab, grey-pink color. The plant got Blackspot like no tomorrow as well. It died within one year when I stopped applying fungicide. I was glad to see it volunteer to exit on its own.

So, be careful what you ask for.

EDIT:

I realize that almost any rose can be coaxed into delivering a reasonable performance, if the grower is willing to invest what it takes to get said rose to perform. But after maintaining an archive of 2000+ varieties for 22 years, I have lost all patience for roses that require extraordinary measures to "grow well". There are many roses in my archive that grow like the proverbial weed without any attention whatsoever, but there are also hundreds of varieties that perished quickly after "life support" style care was no longer provided (in 2010). Right this moment, I recall a moment last May when I was admiring my 8 foot specimen of "J-5" (aka "Prairie Magic", H. Marshall, 1973) in spectacular full bloom, and looking at the empty spaces nearby where once grow 'Westerland' and 'Jocelyn' and half a dozen other modern hybrids. "J-5" was huge, healthy, vigorous and did not require any attention whatsoever, and yet many of the named, commercially distributed roses that used to be its neighbor were all dead and gone years ago - most failed from chronic Blackspot infection. And yet there was "J-5" - a monolith of a rose, towering over my head, smothered in glowing multi-hued orange blooms; the very picture of good health.

So when I comment on the remarkably shabby performance of a rose I've grown (like many of the early Austins), its because I've seen what a GOOD rose looks and grows like. I believe the Austin genre could have been so much better if 1) sturdier parents had been used and 2) greater care was taken in selecting only strong, healthy varieties. I've found very few Austins qualify as "strong and healthy".

Of course, YMMV.