YES! Everything has to be just right for me to detect it, but Lady Hillingdon has the most perfect "ripe apricot" scent to me. It's as elusive and as rich as the scent of the similarly colored garden primroses you find in the nurseries this time of year. That's the only color primrose I've ever gotten any scent from and it's exactly the same as Lady Hillingdon's to me. Wonderful! Kim

How wonderful that every thing converged and you got the chance to smell her delicious scent!

how exciting for you, buford. my plant produced exactly one bloom and no scent. ripe apricots, yumm.

That's it, ripe apricots! Thanks roseseek!

I can always smell it in this climate. I've always said apricot jam. But definitely apricot.

I do love this rose, and scent is important to me, but I have never noticed much scent with Lady Hillingdon, apricot or not. I don't notice much scent from any of the teas, chinas, or noisettes, which is why I have resisted growing them in the past.

To me the best rose scents are rugosas, damasks, albas, and many hybrid perpetuals, along with the modern roses that carry their fragrances. Oh yes, and the floating scents of roses such as Rosa moschata or Marie Pavie. You don't get much when you put your nose into the the blooms, but if you stand back and breathe, you will be carried away.

But do grow Lady H anyway. You won't regret it, whether you smell those apricots or nothing at all.

Rosefolly

Thanks so much! My LH is a baby - I just rescued it from its pot (where it had NEVER bloomed, so I forgot who it was) and planted it in the garden about a month ago. It has doubled in size, and I am excited to see if the blooms have fragrance - that would be great!

Jackie

I believe my LH is always very fragrant. To my nose it is not an apricot smell, but the smell of high quality srtong fresh brewed black tea. I am a big tea lover. I drink many cups every day using freshly brewed tea (using leaves, not bags) and this is the fragrance of my LH. It is quite pronounced and I LOVE it.
Olga

hmmm, time to quote the only LH factoid I know - regarding the apt nodding blooms. It was the real Lady Hillingdon who explained how she survived Lord Hillingdon's amorous advances by 'lying back and thinking of England'.
Apart from that, I must concur with Olga inasmuch as this is a definate shoo-in for a tea rose since it truly does smell of fine China tea - maybe even a trace of Formosa Oolong or a less smokey version of Lapsang Suchong.
As a true brit, I also drink gallons of the stuff - in a (warmed) pot with proper leaves.
Roseseek get some auriculas- mine sometimes throw out a winter flower in the greenhouse and in the long dark days of winter, I often rush outside to sniff my auricula (yeah, I know, it sounds slightly perverse!) Don't bother with the fancy show types, just a common old border or alpine one will do - the scent is truly stupendous (and the sight, of these perfect little minatures is also quite breathtaking).

I'd love to be able to grow the auriculas, campanula. They're not for my garden. There is no greenhouse and the exposure prohibits one. It would be an incinerator. Amending the soil to make them happy, would also make the gophers and moles extremely happy! Water would also be a great issue for them. Keeping this soil damp enough to make them flourish would be impossible. The roses, black walnuts, caeselpinia, crepe myrtle, salvia, euphorbia, mesquite, dodonea, leucophyllum and bauhinia trees love it, but this type of plant is best left to enjoy at the nursery for me. Thanks, though!

This soil and climate aren't even really suited for most "antique roses". Species and their close hybrids, Teas, Chinas, Noisettes and moderns are most happy on this hill. Kim

Too true, Kim, plants flourish in the conditions they originated in but we gardeners are not having such limitations. Auriculas were one of the old florists flowers beloved of mill workers, weavers and factory hands precisely because they thrived in tiny pots of poor soil on windowsills and ledges. Unlike most of the primula clan, drought is merely brushed off along with wind, rain, and snow ( but of course, these are foreign and exotic in Cali, right?) Not all is trouble-free in auricula land though since they are plagued by vine weevils (the bane of heucheras too). Even so, mine sit, in tiny 3inch clay pots, alongside the echeverias, sedums and aeoniums, basking in the East Anglian sun and shrugging off the miserable freezing Easterlies which blight our winters. Perfect little miniature jewels of loveliness. Funnily enough, the majority of roses I grow are exactly as yours apart from teas - the noisettes, chinas and wildlings are brilliant, growing well in the breckland and fens of East Anglia.

My Lady H is blooming right now. I sniffed the roses. Nothing.

Gorgeous, though.

Rosefolly