I hope you can find someone who would like to take your Austins, rather than shovel pruning them. If I lived closer, I would take them for my mom...she would love to have some Austin roses. I bought her some bands this year, but it will be a few years (in our zone) before they'll bloom.

Gertrude Jeckyll is supposed to have a great fragrance :)

My favourite Austins for scent are
Sharifa asma
Golden celebration
Evelyn
Brother cadfael
Ambridge rose
Gertude jekyll
Eglantyne
Wife of bath
William Shakespeare2000
Crown princess Margareta
Leander
Heritage
I don't find Mary rose to have much of a scent.

That's just about all my austins.

Non austin favourite scents are, Lady Hillingdon, SdLM ,Jacques Cartier, La Reine and Queen of the Musks.

My best smelling Austins:

The Generous Gardener

Jude the Obscure

Lady Emma Hamilton

Pat Austin

Barbara Austin

Pretty Jessica

Gertrude Jeckyl****
Sharifa Asma***
Golden Celebration***
Evelyn****
Constance Spry***
Ambridge ***
Pat Austin***

Oklahoma**** is my favorite smelling non-austin

One of my favorites is Cymbaline, which has a very nice myrrh scent. Very beautiful, soft coloring, too. This is one of the roses in my garden that I would stop, every single time, to "smell the rose". I got mine from Vintage last year, but it is now listed as a custom propagation rose. I'm not sure who else may have it.

I absolutely love the myrrh scent, but there are numerous people who don't care for it at all. Definitely an individual preference!

Lynn

Our three favorite Austins for scent are:

Jude the Obscure
Gertrude Jekyll
Heritage

The majority of the others have lovely fragrances as well, but those are my top three favorites!

My best Austins for fragrance are
Jude the Obscure
Golden Celebration
Gertrude Jekyll
WS2000
Pat Austin
Heritage

Crown Princess Margareta (I have two) doesn't seem to have a lot of fragrance for me:-(.

You might also consider Romanticas, such as Yves Piaget or Rouge Royale or Peter Mayle and others.

Masha

If you like myrrh, I'd highly recommend St Cecilia, it has a wonderful scent of myrrh mixed with fruit and almond. Fabulous.

I love Austins, and these days I only buy highly fragrant roses. My favourites for scent..
Jude the Obscure
Lady Emma Hamilton
Jubilee Celebration
St Cecilia
Scepter'd Isle
The Ingenious Mr. Fairchild (I love this rose)
Strawberry Hill (another very strong myrrh you should love)
William Shakespeare 2000
The Prince

Best wishes,
robert

My most fragrant Austins are:

Sharifa Asma
Evelyn
Pretty Jessica
Tamora (didn't like it at first, but it grew on me!)
The Prince
Jude the Obscure
Heritage

Favourite Non-Austins: Louise Odier, Souvenir de Philemon Cochet, Jacques Cartier, Felicite Parmentier

Judith

They are so wonderful in their fragrances, it's hard to pick the favorites...

But these are some of my very best Austins for fragrance:

Eglantyne
Sharifa Asma
Gertrude Jekyll
The Mayflower
Evelyn
William Shakespeare 2000
The Alnwick Rose
Bishop's Castle

I don't have many Austins but these seem the most fragrant to me:

Abraham Darby
Wife of Bath
Sister Elizabeth
Harlow Carr
Bishop's Castle

Ingrid

Gertrude Jekyll is absolutely the most fragrant of all roses to me. Abraham Darby is also wonderfully fragrant as is Golden Celebration. I have to also add that the non-Austin old rose, Madame Alfred Carriere is a fragrant and healthy rose for me.

It is hard to beat Abe Darby...

I would rate the fragrance of the DA's in my garden as follows:

1) Abraham Darby
2) Gertrude Jekyll
3) WS2000
4) Lady Emma Hamilton
5) Tamora
6) The Prince
7) Falstaff

Oh geez, I forgot my Abraham Darby - of course, he's one of my most fragrant Austins!
Judith

'Sharifa Asma', one of the very few Austins that will grow tolerably well for me. Wonderfully fragrant by any standards. Lots of the Austins smell really good, but I don't keep much track of them. I also have 'The Pilgrim', alive if not flourishing, a myrrh-scented, very lovely rose. I'm one of those who like the myrrh fragrance.
Melissa

My most fragrant Austins are Scepter'd Isle and Tradescant. Lilian Austin also has a nice myrrh fragrance, but not as strong as Scepter'd Isle. Tradescant has an old rose fragrance and everyone who has smelled one of mine has really liked it.

My most fragrant non Austins would be Maggie and Darlow's Enigma.

I was beginning to wonder if I am the only one who thinks of Abe as fragrant and then Melva and Judith remembered him. He is one of my few Austin survivors. Another fragrant but not so vigorous is Fisherman's Friend which I bought as Lover's Delight (found rose) later ID'd as FF. The carmine flowers smell delicious and are beautiful!

Great post, I'm making notes. Mine is one already mentioned, Sharifa Asma. I love Mary Magdeline, great rose in every way, wonderful mhyrr scent,as Lynn said if you like that. I didn't at first but do now.
I hope you guys don't mind me adding a few moderns in here. My most fragrant other than Sharifa Asma and Cramasoi Sup. are my lavendar roses, Angel Face, Simply Marvelous (it is) and Heirloom.

cweathersby how are your Charlotte and Symphony regarding disease and rebloom in your TX garden?
Nancy

I forgot to mention Abe Darby on my list, he is one of the most fragrant right up there with Sharifa Asma and Gertrude Jeckyl. The Pilgrim is also very nice and healthy rose with great rebloom and some fragrance, but not as strong as some others mentioned. Brother Cadfael is also very fragrant but stingy with rebloom for me. St Swithun is good bloomer that is fragrant for me, it gets very large.

Carrie, weird, but I can't smell any fragrance from Mary Rose at all..Ron thinks she's wonderful. Neither of us smells Pat Austin..both agree Abe Darby is heady with a mix of citrus! Tradescant is one of our most smelly next to Evelyn.

Some of the OGRs we love for fragrance are Louis Phillipe (cherry candy) but may be the one you are growing as Cramosi Superior... Ducher, subtle but so fresh, Gruss an Teplitz..outstanding, Souv. de St. Anne's..clove.

One of my favorite alltimes is Prairie Harvest, Buck. Gorgeous and so fragrant. Not myrrh but if I could bottle, I would

Nancy,
Both are good rebloomers. There are ALWAYS a few blooms on Charlotte. But the disease resistance isn't there. Charlotte is a monster rose in my garden.
Symphony is too new for me to comment on disease resistance or size, but I do remember good rebloom.

Charlotte is actually getting the boot this week. The blooms aren't fragrant enough to make it worth any space in my garden.

I'm surprised no one mentioned Fair Bianca, it's one of our more powerfully fragrant Austins.

The ones I personally can smell the strongest and can remember are (in no particular order):
Gertrude Jekyll
Jude the Obscure
Fair Bianca
Golden Celebration
Graham Thomas
Mary Rose
Molineux
Abraham Darby
Brother Cadfael

--Ron

I don't have that many Austin roses in my current garden yet, but the best smelling so far are Heritage and Pretty Jessica. I happen to find the fragrance of Pretty Jessica particularly complex and refined. Both roses have outstanding blooms, too.

A couple of years ago I was growing Mary Rose in a pot on my balcony and liked her fragrance and blowsy blooms so much that I just got her again as a band. Hope I will get some flowers this year already.

Might be interesting to go through this thread and make a list of the most named best smelling Austins. It is always good to know what to buy next :-)!

Christina

I dont as yet have many Austins (ordered about 6 for this year). Of the ones I do have Gertrude Jekyll is the most fragrant and next comes William Shakespeare 2000.
Sanju

On another tread somebody mentions having an overly acute sense of smell, almost painful. This happened to me once when I smelled the Austin rugosa Snowdon. The smell hit my nose so hard I had to take a step back. I don't know if it was a good or bad smell, only that it was too much. It's funny that the Austin catalogue doesn't mention the scent of Snowdon as in any way special. I have only two Austins myself, Constance Spry and Abraham Darby. Both smell good but nothing special, perhaps because they are surrounded by so many other scented plants.

I love my Austins! Can't wait to bury my nose in...

Christopher Marlowe
Evelyn
Gertrude Jekyll
Pretty Jessica
Harlow Carr
Radio Times
Spirit of Freedom
Abe Darby
Golden Celebration
Jubilee Celebration
Lady Emma Hamilton
Tamora

There have been a lot of new Austins since this thread was first posted in 2010. Do you still agree with these choices?

Personally, I still think that Abraham Darby is still one of the best scented Austins. I'm surprised that Alnwick Castle is not on anyone's list here, since it was released in 2001 and is one of the best smelling roses in my garden. Munstead Wood was released in 2010 so too new to make this thread.

This thread is before my time here, but in recent years 'The Poet's Wife' should be up there, I just think it's one of the most marvellous yellow roses out there, in every way, and that includes growing north facing, with little sun for most of the year... and a scent quite different to so many others...

Wow, Krista, those are beautiful. Thanks for sharing!