Scentless Rose

Last year I planted an HT rose, Simply the Best, in my garden. This rose is listed as having a medium scent. However, it has no scent whatsover.

Is there a reason for this? I have fed the rose with rose feed and sprayed it to kill the green fly. The rose looks healthy enough and it is a beautiful colour. The soil here is quite heavy clay. The bed the rose is in doesn't get the sun on it all day, but it gets at least 6 hours of sun. Can I do anything to ensure it has a scent?

 

Hello Showersinmay

Scent is one of those elusive, infuriating things. What to one person may be a very strong smell can be virtually undetectable to another. Some plants waft their scent around freely, but smell of nothing much when you get up close. Some you have to sniff at close quarters! In addition, we all have different ideas about what smells nice and what doesn't. I love the heady smell of honeysuckle but a former neighbour wasn't delighted by it as she said it made her feel nauseous and gave her headaches.

No one seems to argue much about the smell of roses, however. It is glorious. We really need WiseOldOwl, our rose expert, on this one - I'm sure he'll be along soon. But it does seem to me that you're doing everything you can for your rose. Sunshine is important because the scent will always be strongest when the plant is in full sun and will tend to fade when it is in shade. It's probable, however, that what one nurseryman thought of as a 'medium' scent just doesn't seem that strong to you.

If you want a really strongly scented plant (and I never buy anything else) then you should look through a rose catalogue and choose something which is flagged up as being so. (There is an annual prize for a perfumed rose, apparently!) Harkness Roses Buy Roses at Harkness Online - Welcome to Harkness Roses Online is particularly helpful in this respect as it rates its plants from 1-10 on the scent scale. David Austin's catalogue is also very informative www.davidaustinroses.com/english/. Of course, these things can only ever be a guide.

Here are a few of my personal favourites:-

'Margaret Merrill' - a white floribunda which has an absolutely delicious, strong scent.
Nice, sturdy plant which produces tons of flowers.

'Evelyn' - one of David Austin's nostalgic 'old fashioned' looking roses. It's
a salmon-y pink and smells gorgeous. David Austin has many lovely roses
which are now thought to be better in some ways than
'Evelyn', but to my way of thinking it's yet to be surpassed for scent.
Crabtree and Evelyn use it in their potions.

St Cecilia - Another David Austin rose with clear pink flowers. The smell is
sometimes described as 'myrrh'. To me, it's cold cream. Lovely,
anyway.

 

Thanks for your suggestions. I'll try looking at both the web sites you mention.

I really wanted rose of sort of orange colour. I have recently planted Fragrant Cloud, Special Anniversary, Chris Beardshaw, Deep Secret and Velvet Fragrance. The climbing roses I have are Compassion and Arthur Bell. All of them have a strong scent. I also planted HT Ena Harkness which has a lovely smell but has been a tad disappointing because it hangs its head!

The web site I used to try and find some scented roses was roselocator.com. This web site listed Simply The Best as having a medium scent.

 

The only orange rose the locator site comes up with is

" Lady Emma Hamilton "

exceptional fragrance.

but you may prefer some of the others like " Tatton " with a rating of 6-8 very strong.

 

There is a climbing version of 'Ena Harkness'; Ena's 'weak neck' is a bit of an advantage with a climber, as the flowers look at you!