The best-scented roses for your cutting garden
At some stage in June, your garden will be a glorious affair full of the best-scented roses, with strong, and sweet fragrances. Placing a posy in the house, close to a family hub like the kitchen table, unites your home and garden. You don’t have to be a serious flower arranger either. All it takes is a simple jug, or small vase of well-chosen plants carefully harvested so that your garden hardly notices.
If you have a larger garden, it’s well worth creating a designated cutting garden. Especially for picking perennials, bulbous plants, and annuals in country house style. Your cutting garden could have wicker edges, obelisks at each corner, or a simple picket fence, should you wish. If you have a smaller garden, you can still snip away but don't pick everything because garden flowers last much longer than cut flowers.
Choosing the best-scented roses
Roses are incredibly diverse, coming in various sizes, shapes, and colours, with petals boasting a wide range of textures. While some offer a sweet scent, it's worth noting that many modern hybrid varieties may not possess the same scent as traditional roses.
However, thanks to advancements in breeding, caring for roses has become more manageable than ever. Newer plant types are easier to care for and bloom repeatedly, giving a constant show of colours in the garden.
There are various types of fragrant roses to choose from. These include classic roses, hybrid tea roses, and scented climbing roses.
It may seem overwhelming to decide among them. To choose the perfect rose, first think about the space in which it is going. If you want to add roses alongside other shade-tolerant shrubs, then opt for shrub roses. If you need a rose to climb then choose climbing scented roses.
For small gardens, choose small rose varieties that are the right size. Stick to one or two colours to prevent a cluttered appearance. In big gardens, plant big groups of flowers with the same colour. Use structures like arbours or pergolas and plant climbing roses with scent.
For front gardens, you will want to leave plenty of room around rose plants, so they don’t obstruct walkways or entrances. Provide plenty of distance to provide the roses with the right amount of air circulation and sun.
How to arrange scented roses
Cut the flowers in the morning if you can, as early as possible. Immediately immerse each stem in a bucket of cool water up to its neck. Then stand them in a shady place and let them drink for a few hours.
Soft stems need a diagonal cut with sharp scissors to increase the surface area of the stem and help the uptake of water. Woody stems need distressing with a small hammer or similar.
When arranging, don’t allow any foliage to linger below the waterline, it will green up the water as it decomposes killing the flowers. It will also smell. Change the water regularly or top it up.
Refresh the flowers by taking them out of the container and discard any spent flowers. Recut the stems of those that will do a little longer. Shake each flower so that it sheds any debris and then rearrange.
A perfect trio
Peonies are a perfect pairing with roses. The soft, blousy blooms highlight darker colours, and after they have bloomed, the foliage tones well together.
Add white bleeding hearts (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) to this, and you have a toning trio that follows each other.
The best-scented roses
The perfect pink flower roses for cutting include 'Reine Victoria', with its deep pink fully cupped flowers. For a soft pink, try A Whiter Shade of Pale, a great compact hybrid tea with excellent resistance to disease. For a fantastic scented climber, try 'Constance Spry'. You can grow it as either a climber or a shrub, and it produces blooms up to 5cm wide.
Apricot roses also look good in a vase, with dark foliage or sultry flowers, and these include ‘Joie de Vivre’ and ‘Buff Beauty’. Clearer yellow are excellent too, especially with blues, and ‘Arthur Bell' has beautiful golden flowers that fade to cream.
If you love white cut flowers, try 'Margaret Merril' a delicate double pale pink to white floribunda. Repeat-flowering from July to September. For a more cabbage-type flower, plant 'Madame Hardy'. A great shrub rose with strongly scented blooms.
