Honorine De Brabant

Honorine De Brabant is one of the few striped Bourbon Roses. It´s origin is unknown, but it could be a 'sport' (random mutation) of a bourbon - just like one of the most well known striped roses; Rosa Mundi S. Rosa Versicolor is a sport of Rosa Gallica 'Officinalis' commonly known as the Apothecary's Rose.

It seems like people either love or hate striped roses. I can not claim that I like striped roses very much! Some think they look like candy, but I have never understood the fascination with these striped roses. They remind me of bacon! But I must admit that they are a novelty among Old Garden Roses or Antique Roses - (I hate the overexploited term; Heirloom ). Heirloom this and that...

The reason I like this Bourbon rose, is that they have very elegant cupshaped flowers with thin delicate petals. They have a fine old rose fragrance - not as strong as one might expect from a bourbon rose, but very pleasant. It is a vigorous shrub rose and can become very large: more than 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide. But it can be pruned and trained into the desired shape. And unlike Rosa Mundi it repeat blooms. The plant I saw at Sissinghurst in England was spectacular and I saw really nice specimens many other places, before I decided to grow this rose myself. It has better disease resistance than many other bourbons, but it will get a little blackspot.

In America I have seen another shrub rose called Scentimental - While it does have a better growth habit than many Hybrid Tea roses, it did not have neither the scent that is part of the "HYPE" about this rose, nor the beautiful flowers of Honorine De Brabant or the Hybrid Perpetual 'Ferdinand Pichard'. So I do not get sentimental about this 'reproduction rose' with plastic like petals. Just because the American Rose Society wants to signal a move away from the fussy, disease ridden exhibition style Hybrid Tea roses, towards roses that are easier to grow and makes better garden plants - I do not think that making Scentimental an AARS Winner in 1997, was a good choice! I wonder who grow these gaudy roses that seems to become AARS winners? But like they say it does "Mimic the look and scent of striped roses of the 1800s". Honorine de Brabant does not "mimic" - it is the real thing! Not that I wan´t to be considered an Old Garden Rose snob - I do think many modern roses are wonderful and very good, fragrant garden plants, with far better disease resistance than many Old Garden Roses. I consider these roses a huge improvement over the many thousand gaudy colored floribundas and hybrid teas, that have given roses such a bad reputation.