I realise now that my first review might not have been very encouraging so here are my latest impressions: Despite me mixing my brother's fishing ground bait into the compost instead of the 'Fish, Blood & Bone' that I should have (they looked identical), the 'Rene Goscinnys' grew quite well and reached about 45cm high whilst in pots. I'm hoping they'll make 60-80cm next year (2025) when in the flower bed. 'Henri Delbard' might be a good alternative if you want a taller plant and 'Stephane Bern' (which isn't available in the UK yet) is also taller with darker flowers and possibly the bonus of very similar fragrance components to RG.
RG's flowers turned out to be striking - large filled saucers of cheerful bright orange and long-lasting on the bushes which gave me about 10 buds. - pretty good since they were off to a bad start.
The scent of just 2 open blooms (in ideal weather) was like an intense sugary peach/mango candy not typical rose at all and was detected in the air about 2 metres from the plants though a bit more faintly right inside the petals. Now that sounds illogical doesn't it? However, if you know a bit about roses you'll know that some of them don't smell so strong when you put your nostrils to the petals but even so they can spread their aroma some distance from the plant and it becomes more noticeable when mixed in the circulating air like those fireworks that 'pop!' and travel invisibly away from the original explosion and then blast out in all directions some distance away. I liked the smell more than my 'Lady Emma Hamilton' rose for example. Now I can't wait for next year's performance - with many more flowers hopefully!
