I have around 30 varieties (hybrid teas, floribundas, OGRs, one rugosa and DAs) to experiment with, all of them were selected for very strong fragrance as I treat it as most important thing for flowers.
I have some varieties that are considered extremely strongly scented but I am curious to create new breeds that perhaps would be even more fragrant. Some examples I was thinking of;
Madame Issac Pereire× Yolande d’aragon
Madame Issac Pereire× Spirit of Freedom
Chandos Beauty× Francis Meilland
Gertrude Jekyll× Spirit of Freedom
Souvenir de la malmaison×Duchesse de Rohan
Im my garden fungal diseases are not bad- suprisingly I never noticed blackspot on MIP or SDLM or YDA however there was some issue with mildew.
Anyone has any experience? Anyone tried those crosses.
Welcome aboard! I wish I had some experience to share with how to improve fragrance, but I don’t. But I too consider this a very important goal. I am in a zone 3a climate and mostly what I have to work with are rugosas (these are what I am focusing on), spinosissimas, and kordesiis hybrids. The last of these groups are not always entirely hardy and with few exceptions, not known for their excellent fragrances. Pretty much anything else I bring in I plan to bury in the winter.
You mentioned you had a rugosa. Which one is it? What climactic zone are you in?
The best smelling rose I have ever come across is my double delight rose. It has a spicy kind of sweet smell. It is a very popular hybrid tea. Grows around 4 feet tall. Grows blooms in various shades of pink, yellow, and white. Survives in large pots or in the ground. They are also hardy and not too hard to care for. Provided you baby them just a little bit, they will grow really well for you. And they will produce big beautiful blooms with a really nice scent.
For a more citrus type scent, I highly recommend the peach drift rose. If they are available for your area, you can plant them. They are not hard at all to care for. They can grow in pots or in the ground. They are mounding roses. They grow about 2 feet tall, and spread out to about 3 to 4 feet, if you let them grow out that is. You can prune them to keep them smaller too. They make excellent ground cover shrubs. And they smell a lot like Fruit Loops cereal. And the blooms are 2 to 3 inches wide. Not that big. But they are a beautiful variety of peach and pink colors when in bloom. And the scent is very nice.
If you like more of a grass scent, the peace rose might be worth your time. They are a hybrid tea rose with huge blooms.
All of the self-seedlings I’ve grown from drift roses have had a spreading or miniature form that might be unideal for cut flowers, but a few of them were surprisingly fragrant with decent(ish) health and resilience. Could be a good option for introducing some disease-resistance considering how black spot prone a lot of the fragrant hybrid teas are.
The best smelling roses I’ve grown are Oklahoma and r. rugosa, but I feel like both of those might open a can of worms health-wise that would take several generations to sort out.
@PetePL your being unable to detect Double Delight’s scent is puzzling. It’s one of the sweetest, “stickiest” rose scents I’ve ever encountered. Perhaps what was provided to you as Double Delight might be something like Cherry Parfait? CP is a very good rose, even healthier than Double Delight, it just lacks scent. 'Cherry Parfait ™' Rose
If grown from seed roses very seldom will look like the parent roses. But perhaps you got one that has a virus or disease. Check out your rose to see if it has any symptoms of disease or viruses. Then check it out to see if it was seed grown. Seed grown roses can be a tad weird compared to other roses that are grown from cuttings or potted from cuttings that are commercially grown. Seeds are also very difficult to get from hybrid tea roses. Some rose varieties will only grow from cuttings as a matter of fact. If it is sick you might want to try again in a year or two with a healthy cutting or potted rose with roots from your local nursery or garden center. Double delight roses also do well in larger pots, provided you use rose specific potting soil mix. But if you pot them, you do have to repot them every 2 to 3 years with fresh soil. And maybe a root trim. Repot them before new growth starts and give them as hard a pruning as possible without killing them. Then give them some fish emulsion fertilizer (or a good granulated fertilizer) when your rose is ready to be fertilized again after repotting it. If it gets really hot and dry, try using some mulch too. Grass clippings make great mulch. Check them every day for pests too. Especially rose aphids. They love to attack rose buds.
You’re lucky that you can grow these without Blackspot! I have tried to grow ‘Mme Isaac Perriere’ and ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ before and both suffered so badly from Blackspot that it gradually killed the plants. If you don’t have that problem, then these might be good candidates from breeding, but it’s highly likely that the seedlings will be difficult-to-impossible to grow in regions that have greater disease pressure than your own climate. But if you’re only breeding for your own garden, then that’s not an issue. Good luck!
Thankfully, spotting isn’t that much of an issue here, but the RUST! Bourbons and the roses too closely related to them appear to have NO rust resistance, so if that’s an issue where you are, be forewarned.
I was suprised that they don’t get ANY blackspot. Its also the case with Souvenir de La Malmaison. And It’s not like there is no blackspot in my garden- it starts in October but a lot of DA gets defoliated. The worst is with Abraham Darby- except blackspot it got such horrible rust I had to cut it to the ground and was the only bush to die after winter- fortunately(?) I have two rooted cuttings that survived it in the ground despite barely any roots.
I would be curious to cross MIP with some full petaled rugosa.
Our climate generally doesn’t support black spot issues. They CAN happen in the convergence of conditions, but most years, there just isn’t that type of disease pressure. We usually don’t get “heat” and “humidity” together. But, if the variety can mildew or rust, they will here. Fortunately, both of those can more easily be mitigated by increasing the water the plant receives. Water stress EASILY triggers both issues, even with types which are generally resistant to them. I didn’t believe it until I DID it.