To smell, or not to smell, that is the question

To me, there is nothing better than burying my nose in a stinky rose! When I say stink, I’m referring to heavenly stink, not wet dog stink!

I think that is why I am so drawn to English roses and the Old Garden Roses. They just smell so good!

Yes, OGR mostly just bloom once a year in the spring, but man, the fragrance is hard to beat! To me it’s worth it for some ‘stinky pleasure’. A lot of the fragrant roses that are historic roses, will repeat bloom, like Madame Isaac Pereire, Reine Victoria, Sydonie, Rose de Rescht, Louise Odier to name a few. Not only are they gorgeous, and historic, they smell divine! Some people say they (OGR) get too big and they don’t have the space for them, which I get. My plants of Rose de Rescht have never gotten overly large, so that might be as good one to try if you’d like to take a test drive on an Old Garden Beauty!

But….fragrance is not everything. I am more than happy to give grace to an unscented or very lightly scented rose if they visually take my breath away and make me happy that way. A few of my more favorites that have very little ‘stink’ to them are Versigny, Samantha, The Faun and Triple Delight.

I always get a smile when I see one of my dogs walk up to a rose and stick their nose in a lower bloom. Do they enjoy a good smelling rose, or was there a bee in there?!!