White is also far more aesthetically problematic than one might assume.  I mean, basics the world over have gone crazy planting swathes of Iceberg Rose along their post and rail driveways, but someone should have told them a lack of positive colour doesn't mean an easy fit in the landscape. 

It's pronounced glahrms, apparently.  First, a semi-rambling word about white roses in general.  You can skip this bit if you just want the shit on Glamis Castle. 

White isn't my favourite colour and I'm not 100% enthusiastic about its stealthy creep into our garden, largely on the back of an increasing appreciation of older varieties.  I plant them in spite of all that tasteful pallor.

Genetically, colour in roses can be completely or incompletely dominant (i.e red + white can result in red, white or pink).  But with blanc featuring so heavily in the enormous Rosaceae family (roses, berries, apples etc.), you'd think it would be easy enough to breed a decent white rose.  Or that this embarrassment of ancestral riches should have endowed any offspring with the rustic health of those progenitors.  No.  

White is no guarantee of a quality plant. Wish I'd known that a couple of years back.

GC's flowers are a deeply-cupped and slightly ruffled joy, containing enough petals to provide that gracious vintage payoff without looking contrived, slutty or overstuffed.  They are a pretty neutral, saturated white, sort of like milk bottle jubes, rich and selfy, neither glaringly brilliant nor disappointingly dingey.  This wonder is probably achieved via the dense, matte texture of the petals, their substance producing a white that plays well with other hues, looking dirty alongside only the purest, coldest iterations of this same colour.  

​The flowers resist rain well, flopping slightly when hammered but they don't usually ball in our situation.  

It springs from the loins of the yellow Graham Thomas, and Mary Rose, a tall pink that's usually a good doer, and from whence GC's lovely scent probably derives.  I grow both parents.  That beguiling white skipped a generation through the floriferous Mary Rose, which features The Friar and the surpassingly beauteous Ivory Fashion in her immediate lineage.
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And now for the negatives.  

Glamis Castle is an amazingly shitty plant, holistically speaking- a typical DA spotty herbert of the period.  It is puny and unsatisfying, mine clocking in at around 90cm after many years.  Half of that is rangy, leafless twig-leg, bristling with the sort of thorns that hole your clothes from the other side of the fucking garden.  

​I've pruned with its gawky frame in mind, trying to minimise the effect to no avail, and now I just basically dead-head and let it be its bad self.  The messy crown consists of smallish dark green leaves, remarkable only for their ability to explode utterly into rust/blackspotaggedon immediately upon leafing out at the end of winter.  

And yet I do not kill it with fire.  I really should, because there's no excuse for harbouring manky hos like GC.  Luckily, most of my other plantings were selected for health and prosper in spite of this Patient Zero lurking in their midst.  

Like a dozen other David Austin shitbirds I could name, Glamis Castle survives on the basis of two things; paradoxical charisma and hardcore myrrh.  There it is, utterly ratchet but still blooming away a week out from the shortest day.  Its flowers are divine and quite plentifully supplied in spite of well, everything. They so beautifully reconcile the other colours in a nice fat bunch (see below).  And who can stop a myrrh freak from getting their taste?  We just never fucking learn.

Seriously, don't plant Glamis Castle. I wish I hadn't and will probably summon the impetus to bin it... one day.  It needs spraying to be at all presentable and no rose is worth contaminating our struggling biome with that garbage.  If you're determined to plonk it in your spray-free garden, you need to be sure your other roses/susceptible plants can weather the persistent disease burden.  But there are other, less problematic whites and strong myrrhs out there.

​His program's recent redirect toward more spray-free vigour is both overdue and admirable.  Just keep those problematic legacy genes in mind whilst losing your shit over a tag pic and don't get schooled the expensive and frustrating way.  It took me a while to catch on.
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On a happier note, Golden Celebration, as you can probably see from the pics, is one of Austin's top shelf efforts and there will always be a place in my garden for her.

GC is a yellow rose for yellow rose haters.  I used to be one of them and GC pretty much converted me.  She suffers none of the unpleasantness that so often afflicts them, boasting a bloom of gloriously buxom aspect that lasts as well as any other and doesn't bleach out to pallid toilet paper ickiness.  Ignore the white fade apparent in some of these images; it's mostly just an artefact of photography.  GC keeps her buttery goodness til the last minute.  

​It's sometimes argued that Austin only intended his lines for British conditions and if so, he should have articulated that before marketing them the world over.  In the end, his roses' failings boil down to a fundamental selection process that was skewed toward flower form over everything else, especially in his earlier efforts. 

Here she is in a vase with Summer Song.​  GC is an easier fit in a mixed situation than you might imagine, finding analogues in hot, thick pinks, sweaty reds and heavy sunset colours.  I have her alongside other saucy hos like Darcey Bussell and Rose de Rêscht, for example.  Scarlet poppies and deep purple or crimson clematis make truly heavenly accompaniments.  Just remember she is a potent wig-snatcher in the wrong setting and eats lesser yellows for breakfast, so it's best to avoid an unfair contest.
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By mid-morning there is just enough of a low tea scent  (last night's dried out cognac glass + broken packing crate) to qualify as an olfactory experience but I wouldn't buy this plant on that basis.  The 'sauternes and strawberry' claims on the DA site are IMO hyperbolic and by that I mean complete bullshit.

The foliage is probably as median-rose as anything out there; middle green, sort of matte without really giving that overall impression and large in scale.  Thankfully it is dense enough to cover the fuuucking awkward architecture that so often lies beneath.  ​ 

That's right.  I ugly-shamed her undercarriage.  Welcome to the darker side of Golden Celebration.

I've grown this rose for about 10 years as a graft.  Unlike many other DA numbers, she can go without a drink for some time and never looks thirsty.  Half a day of shade doesn't bother her and she is both reliably floriferous and infallibly vigorous.  We've been through some pretty gnarly plague seasons so I'd rate her constitution around 7/10 in that she will power through blackspot without getting naked and remain rust and mildew free in our dense plantings and humidity.  

​In this respect she is remarkably contrary to one of her parents, Graham Thomas.  That guy is a leprous little coffin-dodger I should have nuked from orbit years ago.  Abraham Darby is the other daddy; he is nothing if not sturdy so GC must favour that side.

Okay so I briefly ranted.  It's over now, I promise. Scentimental is a striped rose par excellence.  But even when we dismiss the aforementioned prejudice, it almost falls at the second hurdle- that name.  Rose names these days are either depressingly brutalist (City of Scungeycrust), punny/cringe-tastic (Tee Hee Lady Panties), supercilious literary references (oh hi, David Austin), or just hideously cynical (OMG Best Mum Eva!!!).  

So while it could have been worse, Scentimental is a crap title for this amazing floribunda and really plays into the rose snob's hands.  Look at the pic to the right there; if that plant was called Premier Ribband de la Toute Courtesan or some shit like that, there would be acres of foolios gushing over its superior qualities.  ​

Striped roses are like BDSM.  You either roll that way or you do not, so I'm not going to try and sell you this variety if you object on principle.  I totally respect your discretion.  

Ha ha!  Just kidding.  Rose snobs are the worst and they should absolutely be judged and shunned because they are wrong about almost everything.  Their assertion that striped roses are somehow intrinsically vulgar is utterly asinine; that's like arguing that tigers are in bad taste.  

​Nature knows what she's doing with those colour-break genes and she doesn't need critique from people in popped collars and taupe anything.