Mermaid' single, yellow, striking, scented.
Westside Road Cream Tea' I'll do anything for a white fragrant rose.
Susan Louise' big in all its parts: beauty of bloom and bush, and huge flowers. I bought a plant that is 4' tall at the o.r.c. this year !!! I am thrilled to pieces!!!
Alliance Franco-Russe; yellow Tea with red foliage in spring, and edged with pink, large substantial blooms. Gorgeous... and I have one that I got at the old rose celeb, thanks to tom who budded it.
Blossomtime for cutting and fragrance. re-bloom is far superior to 'New Dawn' which is descends from. I think I may be getting over my extreme prejudice against modern roses. i feel a bit idiotic for having one in the first place.

and
Gloire des Rosomanes, the fragrance drives me crazy, can't get
enough of it. I want to roll around in its' petals like a hussy cat in a bed of catnip.

Lux

Tastes do change. This is not the same list I would have made 5, 10, 25 years ago. I have grown roses for many years, consistently for the past 15.

Crepuscule
Lady Hillingdon
Cl Crimson Glory
Deuil du Dr Reynaud
Munstead Wood

I'll stop there. I probably have a favorite 30 or 40.

Funny, just earlier this very day I was making all sorts of favorites lists for myself, you know, favorite colors, favorite 3 popular songs of the past decade (more or less), favorite vacations. It is fun to do.

Folly

Any and all albas, with 'alba semiplena' and 'alba maxima' being particular favorites.

The entire House of Malmaision. Alas, I can't grow them where I am now.

'Cl. Sunflare'. For me, the best yellow climber I have ever seen except for 'Merechal Niel', and much easier to grow. I have a new one this year, from Palatine--I am hoping, with a grafted plant, and planted against a south facing wall, I can keep it alive.

The entire oeuvre of Mattias Tantau, Jr. 'Fragrant Cloud' was one of the first roses I ever grew and is still a favorite.

'Evelyn' has color and fragrance to die for, and rapid rebloom.

'Alba Meidilland' is a repeat blooming, disease free modern rambler. It grew and grows for me equally well in hot dry CA and now in cool, wet NY.

Even with all its' well-known faults, I have to include 'Graham Thomas'. GT, in full bloom, in all its' 8-10' spendour, is a sight that will take your breath away.

So far my fave top 5 are my pink Don Juan, Evelyn, nacogdoches, SDLM, and strike it rich.

My five most lusted-after roses that are not available here in Australia are:

Secret Garden Climbing Musk
Surpassing Beauty of Woolverstone
Jeanne d'Arc
Alba Suaveolens
Blush Hip

Alas! I doubt I'll even grow them, so I'll have to be content with looking at your pictures.

I fully agree with what nastarana says about 'Graham Thomas'. Once I visited a private garden in eastern Washington state that had the most glorious plants of 'Heritage' and 'Graham Thomas': as big as nastarana says and covered with bloom. They still rank as perhaps the most beautiful and most magnificent roses that I have ever seen.
I have 300-odd rose varieties now and almost all of them are lovely at some point. So I'll list five that I'm admiring at this moment, when the warm climate roses are nearly all finished and the cold hardy once bloomers are past their peak.
'Vierge de Clery'/'Unique Blanche'/'Centifolia alba'. I'm in love with this rose. First it's white, and I like big double fragrant white roses very much. And now that I've dug around this plant and amended its soil, it has begun to grow, sending out long arching canes studded with pink-stained buds that open to fragrant full Centifolia-like blooms. The plant is lanky and thorny, with big coarsely toothed leaves, a real Centifolia, all of it in scale and vigorous, the entire plant deeply satisfactory. It has been in bloom for some weeks now and still has tight buds, so looks like it will have a long flowering.
'Ohl'. A Gallica that looks like it has something else in its ancestry. Big fragrant shapely blooms, deep pink, darker in the center. I wish this one would sucker: probably its soil needs attention.
'Belle sans Flatterie'. Another Gallica, pink, full, fragrant, shapely, low and suckering, thornless. Beautiful, and such a good, well behaved rose. I do love Gallicas. There are a lot of them out there, including many wonderful varieties that aren't well known.
'Robert le Diable'. This is a rose of mixed ancestry, obviously with a lot of Gallica in it but thorny. Low suckering growth and a tough variety: my parent plant, which is doing fine, is growing beside a large willow in shade and I imagine a lot of root competition, but a sucker planted in full sun and poor soil appears to be holding its own as well. Flowers are double and fragrant, of a peculiar smoky brownish purple with pink shadings, very finely--striped doesn't described the patterning--veined and threaded. There's no other rose like it: it's curious but also a beauty.
'Awakening'. All right, it's not one of my top favorites, but 'Awakening' has virtues and is in bloom right now, and is showing promise that it will finally climb over the end of the shed roof AND, perhaps, up the nearby young Italian cypress as well. It took several years to dig itself in, and meanwhile I allowed it to wander over a patch of ground, in which I suspect it tip rooted. The flowers are double and shapely and of a very fresh pink, that of its sport parent 'New Dawn', to which it's identical except for the flower form. It has the virtue of often blooming when there's not much going on in the garden, especially in late fall, and is as tough as 'New Dawn', and is giving me considerable satisfaction right now. I wouldn't want a garden full of similar roses, but a few dotted around are very welcome.
Melissa

I have bought a lot of roses that didn't make it, so I will have to say the survivors are my favorites, dependable, beautiful-
Zephirinie Drouhin, thornless, first and last rose to bloom in my garden, fragrant

Topaz Jewel, Clear yellow rugosa, large blooms, beautiful

Monsieur Tillier, big quartered blooms, tough

Ghislaine de Feligonde- lots of small flowers, peachy buds

Excellenz von Schubert- small Polyantha blooms, long bloom season, full small flowers

Hybrid Musks Cornelia, Felicia, Penelope

Mme Plantier- sensational vigor, gets tall, loaded with small white flowers, pink buds

Gallicas- Belle de Crecy, Leda damask. Tuscany Superb

Rosa mundi once bloomer

Crepuscule

Dublin Bay climber

Betty Boop, long lasting flowers, change colors slowly

Sea Foam, The Fawn, Red Ribbons, Baby Blanket ground cover/ long bloom

Apricot Queen- large apricot blooms, long season

Not sure how this will go. The longer I think about it, the longer the list tend to get!

Right off the bat, I can easily list
Lady of Shalott (Austin)
Munstead Wood (Austin)
Molineux (Austin)
Queen of Sweden (Austin)

Add to that:
Mystic Beauty (Bourbon)
Buff Beauty (hybrid musk)

Pomponella (Kordes)
Eutin (Kordes)

Oklahoma (HT)
Peace (HT--don't grow it any more--disease issues--but it is still one of the most beautiful rose blooms!)
Berolina (HT)
Red Intuition (HT)

Disease-resistance is a very important criteria to me--which tells you how highly I rate Peace, a bs-magnet which got on the list despite that shortcoming.

Kate

The roses I have that I am completely enamored by would be:

Lady Hillingdon
Rosette Delizy
Boule de Neige

Roses that I plan to order either for myself or my mom's garden in the future that I would put in my current top five are:

Felicia
Mlle. Blanche Lafitte

Reine des Violettes has done surprisingly well this year and I just love its color. It almost made the cut. There are so many roses I lust after that aren't realistic for me to grow that I could come up with a top 50 of those if I thought about it.

My top 5 that I can't grow here or likely won't find now are:

Madame Hardy
Blanchefleur
Crested Moss
Elisa Boelle - Learned of it during the recent Vintage offerings.
Marianne

Jay

Health, fragrance & generous repeating bloom being my criteria - along with distinct personality:
Aloha
Golden Celebration
Easy Does It
Abe Darby
America
Dixieland Linda - a year younger than Aloha (from whom she sported) - is catching up quickly in stature & bloom

Marie Pavie
Penelope
Monsieur Tillier
Buff Beauty
Hot Cocoa

Hmmm. At the moment, my favs are Tuscany Superb, The Prince, Indigo, Queen of Denmark, Basye's Purple, Marches Boccella, La Ville de Bruxelles, Felicite Parmentier, and Maiden's Blush. Oops! that's 9. Shall I make it ten and name Violette? Carol

Zephirine Drouhin - Good bloomer, vigorous, fragrant, love the color.
Belinda's Dream - Good bloomer, healthy.
Pink Peace - Love the blooms and the fragrance.
Tiffany - Beautiful rose, healthy and fragrant.
Mme Isaac Pereire - A gorgeous rose, I love it.
Liebeszauber - Very pretty red, healthy, good bloomer, blooms last good.
Peace - A beautiful rose, good bloomer.
Love Song - Love the color and ruffly blooms.
Queen Elizabeth - An all-around good rose for me.
Folklore - Great bloomer, beautiful, healthy.

I'm sure this list will grow and change. I have some new ones I don't know about yet. There are other great ones, but I can't list them all.

Pinocchio, for such a tiny plant, never gets more than 2 ft tall, it's a great bloomer and tough as nails winter survivor.

Reine des Violettes, just for the fragrance alone! Even though it is gorgeous in full bloom too.

English Sonnet (AKA, Samaritan, Lawrence of Arabia, King Arthur, etc.) So many petals hidden in that bud that it's a total surprise every time one opens!

Garden Party, enormous, elegant white blooms gently touched in pale pink.

Dainty Bess, the most perfect blooms in just 5 petals.

Quietness, amazing, gorgeous, every bloom a photo op!

There are quite a few more I could add but I'll restrain myself with 6, lol.

Hmm, I see that some of us are slightly veering away from the rule of five roses, but who cares when it comes to roses? Let's see how well I can do.

Souvenir de la Malmaison - always in bloom, always bushy, disease-resistant although it may have some mildew at times, beautiful and elegant flowers

La France - the flowers have that blowsy, old-world look and are so fragrant and a lovely shade of pink; it more than makes up for the rather stiff and upright bush

Potter and Moore - one of the old Austins and one that really has an old-rose look, with luscious and full, deep blooms that make me swoon, and a small, graceful plant on its own roots, with quite good rebloom

Le Vesuve - there's a sense of wildness about this tea with its smallish leaves and small, sharp thorns. The flowers are a cool pink, somewhat swirled and informal, and they can stand the heat here

Mutabilis - it's sometimes perfect and sometimes not, but it has my heart, one of those passions you can't readily explain

Okay, I must mention two runners-up, Mlle. de Sombreuil and Bishop's Castle. If I could have only multiples of these roses I would still be content with my garden.

Ingrid

What looks best right now, either blooming, with a nice crop of hips, or exceptionally fine foliage growth:

Wild Edric
Cassie/Snowbelt
R. canina 'Laxa'
R. californica 'First Dawn'
Mrs. Doreen Pike
Polareis
Omi Oswald
Stanwell Perpetual
R. fedtschenkoana
Rene d'Anjou
Rose de Rescht
R. bracteata
The Gift
R. alabukensis
Charles Metroz
Europas Rosengarten
Compactilla
R. spinosissima altaica
Leonardo da Vinci
Julia Mannering

Sorry, not even close to five!

Melissa

I just picked my top ten based on another thread, based on health (no-spray in NJ), growth (being as they're all still "babies") and beauty of bloom. Narrowing that ten down to five, I'd have to go with (not in rank order):

"Bermuda Spice" -- healthy, almost always at least a flower or two on it, love the grapefruit smell

"Darlow's Enigma" -- disease-free, makes a nice alternative to a mock orange shrub, subtly scents the whole yard when in bloom, flowers keep coming without deadheading

'Golden Buddha' -- disease-free, beautiful foliage, flowers last a long time on the bush even if the color fades before the petals fall, nice choice for a small front-of-the-border shrub, love the apricot scent of the flowers

'Marie Pavie' -- very little blackspot by the end of the season, flowers keep coming with no pampering, scent is noticeable from my front door

'Souvenir de Victor Landeau' -- vigorous and basically self-pegging, spotting didn't come until Autumn and not much even then, big blooms in few but large flushes in late Spring and late Summer, smells amazing

:-)

~Christopher

Mme. Isaac Pereire
Don Juan .... Deep red roses....has been in bloom since February
Ebb Tide.... The color is more appealing to me than my Twilight Zones
South Africa
Souvenir de la Malmaison
Pink Peace....
Black Magic...

I attempted to keep the list to 5. I'm close ......

Lynn

Anything goes? HTs okay? Then I'd have to put Gold Medal at the top of my list. Nonstop, huge blooms on completely healthy plants. Not just dandelion yellow: depending on weather, can be pink-edged,red-tinged, creamy, blush ... if it had fragrance, it would be close to perfect. Survived our May heat waves with flying colors.

Then Tamora. I'm waiting for my three bushes to grow into one as DA says they will, but even in their first year they've been close to nonstop blooming machines. Nice fragrance, too.

Munstead Wood! At first I thought the blooms were too small, but as time goes on they get bigger .. and bigger .. and are just freaking exquisite. Form, fragrance, color: this rose has an almost mystical appeal.

Marie Van Houtte: bare-root in January, covering a four-foot trellis now. Beautiful old-rose blooms that vary from cream to pink depending on weather. A touch of class. The accompanying photo was taken on a 98-degree day. Heat champ!

Granada. I have two of these body-bag bargains. They're not showing the most vigorous growth, but they bloom steadily and the colors are mind-boggling. I never know what I'll see until the buds open -- and then they begin to change! Fascinating rose with lots of personality.

Queen of Sweden. The first DA I fell in love with. Sturdy little standout with exquisite blooms. If it has a fragrance, I can't smell it, but I love the pale, pale pink, and the flowers keep on coming. Caveat: DA says it is "almost thornless." "Almost" is a squishy word. There's thorns aplenty, IMHO.

Oops, there's six already. Great thread!

Hmm, going off the top of my head, with not much blooming to distract me, here goes:

Edgar Degas
Francis Dubreuil/Barcelona
Bad Worishofen
Heart 'n' Soul
Meilland Decor Arlequin
Sweet Fragrance
Savoy Hotel
Mme. Isaac Periere
Nahema
Colette

Aaak - I'm already at 10 and haven't even gotten to any Austins, or most of the climbers. Hard but a fun process.

Cynthia

OMigod How could I have left out 'Rene d'Anjou'???
the most beautiful rose in bloom in my garden this month. It's a curvaceous pink Moss, that has the prettiest side buds. and such a lovely fragrance, and very attractive dark green leathery foliage that seems nearly bulletproof here.

Lux.

Nippstress, I grew Bad Worishofen in Alabama; what a sweet little rose.

Most of my roses have not started blooming yet or the early buds have been eaten by the rats with long legs and flat teeth - but among the ones that are there that I make a beeline for every day just to see them again

Wasagaming, a rugosa/bourbon hybrid, fragrant, heavy bloom ...

Till Uhlenspiegel, a five petaled hybrid eglantine with a reddish/pinkish bloom. The bush is three years old now and has had a pretty good bloom this year. I can't wait until it is mature and covered with those blooms of such a striking color, So healthy, no foliage issues at all for me.

Purple Skyliner, this rose is three now and just covered with small purple blooms and buds. My three Louise Clements are in a small hedge in front of PS. One of them has a a tangeriney-orange bud. I dream of when the three Louise Clements will be mature enough to have a full flush at the same time the PS is in bloom. Yumm, one day, I hope. For now, I love looking at the one bud and the Purple Skyliner blooms.

Sibelius - love the shrub form and the multitudes of blooms it is covered with.

Belle de Crecy - I cut three and put in a blue and white vase with some dark purple columbine; I just love it. That shrub is so generous a bloomer.

Mousseline - this reblooming moss rose is covered with blooms. It is three now and I think should bloom off and on all summer.

Ask me again my favorites when Heritage finally gets some blooms, when Munstead Wood blooms, when the rest of the gallicas and Henri Martin Bloom. Georges Vibert should bloom for the first time. And alba maxima should bloom soon; I love that rose. Okay, I am stopping now. But here's Wasagaming

{{gwi:270301}}

Looking at everyone's list again, I just wanted to add that my Mme Gregoire Staechlin is also a very slow grower.

I too love Bermuda Spice, Christopher for the smell and sweetness of the bloom. I tried growing it here and finally gave up after three years; no fragrance and balled blooms. So glad it does well for you as I'm just living with the memories :)

SV4Life mentioned Marie van Houtte - that is a wonderful rose too. Love your picture.

Happy rose days! Gean