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Roses aren't fragrant

Why are the roses that are big in size not quite fragrant?
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  • punkdocpunkdoc Posts: 15,039
    Not all roses are fragrant, nothing to do with size.
    How can you lie there and think of England
    When you don't even know who's in the team

    S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
  • raisingirlraisingirl Posts: 7,093
    It's always disappointing, to see a beautiful rose and find it has no scent. There was a vogue for a while of breeding rose cultivars to have huge blooms and repeat flowering with good disease resistance. All of which makes sense but the fragrance got lost along the way.
    Many of the newer cultivars now have good fragrance as well as large flowers. Still hard to beat the fragrance of a rugosa rose though
    Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon

    “It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” 
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    I think a lot of it is down to your own sense of smell. Some roses are apparently highly scented but I get barely a whiff . Others, I can get a strong scent. I was reading the other day, that sufficient watering can have an effect too
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • OmoriOmori Posts: 1,674
    They can smell more or less strongly at different times of day, as well. 
  • Nanny BeachNanny Beach Posts: 8,719
    More when the sun is out
  • NollieNollie Posts: 7,529
    Sometimes they are less fragrant when the sun’s out here, depends on how high the temperature is! Too hot and it burns it off. There are lots of strongly scented roses with large blooms, both very old and new varieties. But you can never have everything in one rose, so it depends which characteristics are most important to you. I have some nearly scentless roses because they are great repeat bloom machines and disease free, others, say next to a seating area, I choose for scent and put up with other undesirable traits.
    Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
  • Nanny BeachNanny Beach Posts: 8,719
    I think you can't beat the old bourbon
  • NollieNollie Posts: 7,529
    Speaking of old Bourbons, @Nanny Beach, two roses I have bought specifically for perfume this year are the Bourbons Madame Isaac Periere (big blooms!) and Souvenir de St. Annes, plus Chartreuse de Parme, a hybrid tea from 1996. 
    Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
  • I love Madame Isaac. The best-scented roses I have ever grown were 'Kathleen Harrop' (which found my garden too chilly and had disease problems) and 'The Generous Gardener'. Though they are all so different. 

    A large-flowered rose that seems both healthy and amazingly scented is the Hybrid Tea 'Deep Secret'.
     
  • Nanny BeachNanny Beach Posts: 8,719
    Oooh, I can smell them now!!
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