By Julie Power
A bare-chested morning jogger stops to smell the perfume of a burgundy rose – New Papa Meilland – at its dewy best in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden. Even a few metres away, its scent is in the air.
“I get sick of the ones that don’t smell,” he says, before continuing his run.
That’s a growing complaint, says the garden’s horticulturalist Tristan O’Hara, who cares for about 100 rose varieties, many rated on a three-star system for their fragrance.
Horticulturalists Grace Hood and Tristan O’Hara at work in the Royal Botanic Garden’s Palace Rose Garden. Many roses are rated for the strength of their fragrance. The red roses are Firefighter, and the yellow roses are Sundance. Credit: Nick Moir
“People are always asking, ‘Why don’t roses smell like they used to?’”
Sold by the stem for Valentine’s Day, or in massed arrangements for weddings and special events, the mostly imported cut roses for sale in Australia are bred for strength and longevity. They need to last a week to 10 days after being picked in Kenya, Ecuador, Colombia and India.
In contrast, perfumed roses typically last only a couple of days.
But florists, rose growers and members of the NSW Rose Society say consumer demand is prompting local growers to breed cultivars with a stronger fragrance. And many old, hardy roses are now making a comeback.
The Fruity Parfuma rose gets three stars out of three. Credit: Nick Moir
Florist and perfumer Saskia Havekes, of Grandiflora in Potts Point, says that since COVID more customers are asking for perfumed roses. “They do really crave the scent of a rose,” she says.
Havekes says fragrance – particularly the scent of roses – is something that immediately conjures memories of childhood, love and sadness. Buying perfumed roses such as a David Austin Claire for a big event, however, needs a brave heart and knowledge that a rose’s perfume fades. Some customers are disappointed when their perfumed roses don’t go the distance.
Havekes says markets are now full of highly scented local roses. “I am always intoxicated by the transience of flowers. I am not always after the longevity. For me, the less amount of time they last, the more beautiful they are. To attract pollinators, they have to be extraordinary, don’t they?”
Visiting Sydney’s botanic garden, rose fancier Wendy McCreery of Florida bends over to smell a Sunset Rose, a mix of red and pink. “Smell this baby,” she urges.
Rose enthusiast Wendy McCreery visiting Sydney from Florida. Credit: Nick Moir
McCreery grew up around roses – her grandmother and mother both worked with flowers. Most cut roses, though, have little perfume: “They smell like air-conditioning,” she says, referring to those refrigerated until sold.
O’Hara says the disappointment on visitors’ faces when a sniff doesn’t deliver had prompted a brutal cull to replace plants with little or no scent. (A rose variety that smells like old socks will stay at the garden, along with the red wing rose – which is known for its thorns, and having no flowers – to illustrate the diversity of species.)
“Visitors do this thing that everyone does. They reach in, go to smell it, and that look of disappointment on their face when they go, ‘Oh!’ rather than the elation [of a perfume] that takes them back to their grandparents’ garden.”
The red wing rose is known for its thorns. It doesn’t flower, but the light reflects in the red thorns.Credit: Nick Moir
O’Hara is planting as many highly perfumed roses as he can near a wide path so visitors in wheelchairs and with other accessibility issues can smell the roses without bending over.
Despite the constant complaint that new roses don’t have any scent, Colin Hollis of the NSW Rose Society says that isn’t necessarily true. There are several outstanding ones, including Firefighter, developed after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, and a white rose, Pope John Paul II, he says. Both are growing in the Botanic Garden.
Many Australian rose growers are specialising in perfumed roses too, Hollis says.
Champion grower Rosalie Vine – a former school principal who has grown more than 400 roses for the Sydney Royal Easter Show, winning 110 champion medals – says breeding a perfumed rose is a lucky dip. The gene that carries the perfume is recessive, and a mix of 400 chemical compounds form the floral note.
Success, Vine says, is in the nose of the beholder too. “We were growing a particular pink rose, and for me, it was highly perfumed,” she recalls. “My husband couldn’t smell a thing.”
For Vine, scent is the most important attribute of a rose. Yet, the Easter Show doesn’t judge flowers by scent. When she showed her roses, she exhibited flowers that would last the duration of the judging instead of those that were perfumed.
“Now I am downsized, I am only buying perfumed roses,” she says, agreeing it was the current consumer trend.
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