http://www.roselocator.com/rose_locator/roses/english_roses/

This gives numerical rating on rose fragrance. I prefer to get garden forum's more accurate opinion on fragrance. One example is Radio Times, which was recommended over Sharifa Asma. It's the most fragrant, most robust out of my 10 Austins. Its fragrance stays in the vase for 3 days, an Australian gave it a 10 rating for fragrance.

Golden Celebration, Eglantyne, Mary Magdalene, and Wise Portia are second place. William Shakespeare is way behind.

Those are the ones from my garden that I can attest to. The strongest by far is WWII and I just love that rose. It looks like fine china--just absolutely a porcelain luster to the blooms.

I currently have 2 vases in the living room with one bloom each of Bride's Dream, Tahitian Sunset, Paradise Found, and Double Delight. It's overpowering and wonderful to get that much aroma from just 4 roses.

That said, next on the fragrance scale for me would be Ambridge Rose and then Munstead Wood and Firefighter, all of which I would rate as "average" disease resistance. None of them are "no-spray" roses.

After that would be Neptune and Memorial Day and Lasting Love, all of which have slightly less fragrance than the previous group, but significantly better disease resistance for my mildew alley here. And speaking in general, most Lavenders and some Purples are more fragrant than other colors, so that would also be a good place to look.

From my perspective, both of the new whites that are sold on the basis of high fragrance (Pope John Paul II from J&P and Weeks answer to that rose, Sugar Moon) are highly over-rated. Neither is all that fragrant to my nose.

Kathy (who is always on the lookout for fragrance and doesn't mind spraying consistently to get it).

SH, I agree that 'Radio Times' has a fantastic fragrance (needs lots of room and fungicide, though).

The second website is the list of most fragrant, as voted by rose forum for 2005-2006: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/roses/msg1113473012456.html

The third website is an old forum on what's fragrant as well as disease resistant: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/roses/msg0302564225651.html

In another strip along the driveway, I accidentally included a couple highly fragrant ones: Peter Mayle (hot pink) and Mrs. John Laing (hybrid perpetual--pink). But they probably aren't that recent either.

If you are more into David Austin types, isn't Molineux quite fragrant? Seem to remember it won some famous fragrance award.

Kate

Evelyn

Christina

Carol

World War II Memorial
Buxom Beauty/Parole
Bolero 2004
Paradise Found
Sweetness (Weeks 2008 mauve stripe)

Please mention susceptibility to balling/petal blight if you know.

In any event Neptune is a far superior rose on every scale I can come up with to Sweetness. Vigor, fragrance, disease resistance, flowers that hold when cut, and so on. And actually, looking at the lineages of both, that should not be too much of a surprise -- Sweetness has about twice as much Sterling Silver in its genes as Neptune. I looked because Sweetness reminds me of Sterling Silver in many ways, growthwise. (That's not a compliment, lol).

But to try to answer your question, the stripes (so far) do not seem to be particularly stable with this one, so it varies all over the place from stripes to splotches and in various shades of mauve from pinky to silvery. The pictures on HMF are mine. I picked those blooms to photograph because they had the most stripes.

Bolero - Very seldom out of bloom. Most of the summer it had masses of blooms. Scent is weakish and cold creamish I think. Mine got mildew. Short plant.

Betty White - is my favorite rose (just a bit higher than Paradise Found). The fragrance is very strong - old rose I think. The flowers last forever and there are many. The roses age well. I loooooove this rose!!!

Carol

I grow Parole aka Buxom Beauty. This is it's first year but so far so good! It has a wonderful fragrance. The blooms are huge and they hold the fragrance and you can literally bury your face in the bloom to sniff it. I don't think that the fragrance wafts in the breeze much since it is contained by the huge blossoms. As far as disease--no disease in my Seattle garden this year. But although we Seattlites like to complain about disease, we don't have nearly the disease pressure of those that live in humid climates and this summer was very dry. As far as balling--I don't think that will be a problem. The petals have substance and the petal count isn't too high. In hot climates people may find that the blooms open quicker and may not get as large.

Lee