First flush review: Perfume Passion (aka Beverly, Kordes), Sweet Intoxication (J&P), Young Lycidas (DA), Ice Girl (Kordes panarosa), Baronne Edmond de Rothschild

maree wrote:Thanks Jordan , thats really decided it , no Fresia , cause i live in a windy spot , do you have Valencia Jordan ? How does it g
o in Melbourne , also do you have Fragrant Cloud ? Hows that in Melbourne too ....Thanks ....

hi maree,

sorry i dont have valencia, but we do keep few at work. its a healty rose IMO. i do have fragrant cloud and its a beautifull healthy fragrant rose , maree its one to get def for its fragrance , i have one in a pot and also one out the front in my garden and superb colour

betsyw wrote:Friesia doesn't require much of a breeze to make it blow, let me tell ya.

Last summer I was admiring one admirable bloom-covered specimen. I fanned away a passing fly, and half the bush's petals just fell in a heap. (very embarrassing - I had only met the owner two minutes before)

lol betsy u killed the bloom

Seeseesee? Jordan wants you to have the incomparable Fragrant Cloud too! Splendid advice.

betsyw wrote:Seeseesee? Jordan wants you to have the incomparable Fragrant Cloud too! Splendid advice.

hahaha

I would love to have a Fragrant Cloud somewhere but its bold colour is difficult to place without making other colours look bleah. What do you guys suggest?

Agaain, as for Parole, I suggest a dark red, silky. There's something about a really deep red that softens and enhances its associates in the orangy red as well as electric deep pink parts of the rose spectrum. I noticed this a few years ago in photographs of master-chic florist Christian Tortu's work.

Thanks betsy. Amongst dark reds would BOTH Parole and FC fit do you think or would that be overkill? Funny I can stand back and determine what works when the colours are there in front of me, but damned hopeless at visualising. And I know clashing colours really bug me!

Hey, we're talkin' the Greats, Flagrant Crowd and Parole here! I'd MAKE 'em fit.

Okay, seriously: As the weather cools or heats up, FC can tip off the hard-edge brick shadings really fast into a much pinker deep terracotta in my area/climate. A lot of people find its colour to be problemmatic, but for me it's subtle, never been the Lady Gaga that Parole is.

To my eye, it looks flat and inelegant mostly with true pale yellows and light bright reds, and positively awful with the mauves and orchid pinks (if you ever swallow poison and need to throw up really fast, stare at FC next to Charles de Gaulle). It looks pretty okay with just about all the darker roses. As for Parole and FC together, I find the notion frightening, but separated by a supervening dark red (got some of those?) I don't think it would be a screaming disaster at all.

Hmmm, think I need to extend another bed past some frothy natives and agapanthus just for FC and then terra cotta and maroonish periennials with some grey/blue in there. That will leave Parole with the dark reds and some pinks. No poison necessary! Thanks betsy, you were a great help.

Betsy and Silky , now you got me thinking , colour combinations , boy oh boy , my head is spinning , think i better get my artist son Patrick , or maybe i'll put Valencia and Fragrant Cloud in a pot next winter and see where they fit in , in the garden ,decisions , decisions lol !!!

betsyw wrote:
Sweet Intoxication: Also heavily campaigned by both Swanes and Treloars. (The 'Garden Vixen" that will steal your senses and captivate your soul!!!!)I can't complain about this one, I can only say that so far it's a bore. The blooms are small, the much-touted "clove" scent (why I bought it) is more cleanser-bitey than clean, and unless cloves start smelling like Morning Fresh, I have no idea where the notion of clove comes from in the description. The flowers are okay, the colour is a who-cares mauve two-tone, with darker centre. In its favour, I'll say that it's a good bloomer. Not great, but good. So much for rose porn.

Ok ...my take on this bush......I will agree with Betty above....this bush throws up small blooms of the mauve kind......it has less smell than Morning Fresh and right now for all the work I put into this bush to get it to a bench stage for the perfume, I am very disappointed. At this moment, I am tossing up between sending it to rosey heaven or potting it up and putting it in the church raffle. So much hype....so big a let down

betsyw, neptune,
Sweet Intox should get better with age, second spring will tell the true tale. i hope it improves for you

Yep, Finbarr, that's what I'm hoping.

I was so damn cross with this one, and I think in no small measure because of the breathless prose that accompanied it.

Now, I am no stranger to rose porn, and I actually find it dreamily fun to read. Sometimes the description actually bears some resemblance to the product ;-) In the case of Sweet Intoxication, there is a yawning credibility gap between the prose and the rose. Never has my heart been less captivated by a garden vixen, and the mingey little flowers sure didn't steal my soul. Let's not even get into the subect of an intoxicating clove scent......

Who wrote this stuff? Not Swane's . It's a J&P fizzpropaganda piece, betcha. Swane's took it all on board, though, and signed off on this campaign drivel in their catalogue.

It would be my hope that Swane's, the most illustrious and respected and trusted Australian supplier of all things gardenworthy, would apply a filter of restraint to the text that will appear in the 2013 catalogue.

just trying to sell the sizzle, it did get silver at trials and the fragrance award, but point taken. finbarr

Finbarr, thanks for listening. Your presence here is so valued.