Interesting "herby" fragrance. Not really sure i'd want to smell it more than once though.

My experience with Julie Andrews/Pink Paradise was quite different (Zone 8b) from BenT's. Faded during the heat wave in late June 2021 when it was 47C (!!!) here in Vancouver area, but otherwise beautiful blooms, good repeat, great scent esp in cool of the day. Blooms got better (1st year) as the summer went on.

I must say that Julie Andrews was the only variety out of the 25 new roses I grew last year that I classified into the ’definitely dumpster’ category, and she got the fateful shovel at the end of the season. The blooms were not generous, she opened too fast, faded badly, the promised fragrance was largely missing. Usually I’ll give a rose a few years to improve, but in this case I thought even if she improved markedly in garden performance, the faults (fading like soiled kleenex, opening fast and pancake flat, mostly scentless) would still be too much.

As for the ’Grande Rose du Siecle’ award she won, I see several other modern roses have won it too, so there must be other roses those Lyonnaise liked this century, not just Julie. Still, I’m baffled that Julie won anything at all, just like I was when Marisa Tomei took home an Oscar. Perhaps all the other roses had been accidentally doused with Round-Up, leaving Julie the sole survivor to win. I don’t know and can only imagine.


The actress is wonderful and I’d love to grow her namesake, but just not This one.