I was very pleased with the delicious spicy scent of Don Juan when I grew it. And I've planted it again, hoping to re-live that great pleasure. I wonder what I will need to do to ZD to help the fragrance along a bit?
I'm still looking for a fragrant rose that will draw me from across the garden. Once, about fifteen years ago I bought Sombreuil from ARE and planted it in late March. I went walking in the garden one morning in early June and there was a delectable smell wafting through the garden that I could not identify. I hunted it down and found that it came from two or three blooms on Sombreuil. Sadly, the rose froze to death the following winter. And I've never encountered the same smell again.
Blanc Double de Coubert was pretty good, too. But it died of drought in its sixth year.
Curiously, the fragrance in most David Austin roses I've grown I could not categorize as so much as moderate, though I've not grown Gertrude Jekyll, Sharifa Asma, or Tradescant.
We sometimes forget that some of the eglantines have foliage that smells of apples ( namely eglantine and Apple Jack) GST suggested planting eglantine roses in a pocket where the air is still. Then, on a dewy spring morning the air will be full of the crisp odor of green apples. I am pleased to report that it has worked well for me. In fact, I would venture to say that I have probably derived as much pleasure from this as I have from smelling the flowers of roses.
