Grown in the gardens of Europe and Asia for many hundreds of years, old garden roses come in every colour except apricot.
Many of them flower only once in summer, but Portland, some Bourbon and Autumn Damasks are repeat- flowering roses, as well as the hybrid perpetual and the musk roses that flower again and again until autumn.
Hybrid perpetuals are the link between old and modern roses. Their most beautiful feature iscertainly their strong fragrance as well as their natural growth, but don't you like the idea of sniffing at the same kind of roseas Napoleon already did?