I have some hard things to say about David Austin roses.  While his innovative breeding program has served up some ravishing aesthetics, those visual fruits have withered on the vine of practical reality too often for me to respond with anything more than a slow clap.  

​I know how to grow a damn rose by now and furthermore I garden in New Zealand i.e. premium fantasy rose territory; moderate temps and a low pest burden.  And still so many of his creations fail to thrive here.  WTF, David? 

This colour isn't one you really expect to find in a natural flower- a rich, custardy tempera gold rather than the cooler dilute lemon of yore.  It's like saffron rice or Baltic amber, its richesse upheld by the thickness of the petals and a bloom that is both graceful and pneumatic.

GC's gigantic flowers really are a perfect combination of substance and structure, with just the right boop of raunchy informality.  They are broad, semi-pirate-ruffled and medium-rise once open.  Despite their size and weight they sit proud on the bush and handle rain incredibly well, never balling or rotting out, even in our maritime spring.  They are a better picking prospect than most DA roses and you might get three days in the vase before they break.  Though she is intensely theatrical in full spate, somehow, rather inexplicably, the total impression is more dignified than the sum of her parts, just in case my description is giving you the willies.  

​You might have noticed by now that Golden Celebration is also endlessly photogenic.  If I ever lose R, I usually find him hovering around this rose with a wide angle in some sort of fugue state.

Here's Graham Thomas (left) compared with Golden Celebration.  GT is slightly more entirely self-yellow.

In Zone-9 areas like this, GC will split her pants and blow out into an enormous (thankfully fairly thornless) Cthuloid abnormality in the blink of an unwary eye.  In the pic above right she is at about 1.5m after leafing out and is getting ready to explode in all directions after her first flush; at this point, I pounce with the secateurs in an effort to contain her.  Then you are confronted with deciding where and when to prune her, which is a nightmare you never wake from.  Her bud spacing and general morphology defeat the conventional approach so I tend to take long stems when cutting for the vase, behead the monster-canes as they emerge and then brutally lop the whole plant down to knee height in winter, chainsaw-style.  That final step makes for a tragic spectacle, though to be honest, I'm almost grateful there's so little you can do to influence her final expression.  Every year she ignores my hapless curtailment and boofs right back out into the big-boned heaux she was before.  You should definitely find a spot for her.

​Scentimental it is, unfortunately.  Though I am baffled as to why.  I have sniffed this rose in a dozen settings and can report that there just isn't much worthwhile scent to speak of, and it's not like anyone who sees it in full bloom will give much of a toss what it smells like anyway.  To my reckoning, 'scent' must be consistently present and furthermore worthy of your nosetime to be rated as such; fucked-out pot pourri dust (as is the case here) doesn't count.  ​It may just be the particular bud material propagated in NZ, but as a sensory panel veteran I can faithfully declare this is not an anosmia.  It's hardly surprising, though- overselling scent is a rose breeder con driven spectacularly out of hand in the last few years by online sales.

​Scentimental's blooms are produced in profusion, both clustered and individually (meaning there is always a decent number of picking prospects) over the entire plant.  Although slender, the stems support the blooms well with just enough nod to ease that awkward Floribunda brass neck stance.  They are quite Hybrid Tea-ish at first, their clean white liberally streaked with deep, vivid raspberry, the former dominating in shadier positions while the red will take over in full sun.  Few things are more lovely than a vase stuffed with an armful of Scentimental once they have opened out to reveal their generous eyes of pale golden stamens.  It flowers in lengthy pulses for me starting in late spring through to early winter, meaning it's a top choice for a position that needs prolonged and reliable impact.

Earlier stripeys like Commandant Beaurepaire and Ferdinand Pichard might have more refined individual flowers, strictly speaking.  Rosa Mundi might have more roguish vintage charm.  A number of modern striped roses promise more complex colour combinations.  But I grow CB, FP and RM and Scentimental pwns those guys by almost every criteria except fragrance.  And I can't even remember the number of modern striped varieties I've punted onto the compost heap after they've proven themselves inexcusably feeble.  

If you can reconcile yourself to the fact that striped roses are awesome and fancy just one for your own place, this is the plant to go for.  They're addictive, though, so make sure you have room for the rest of them.