Wow @Smc You are into your roses 
I am a late comer to roses as I was having my anti middle class tanties for a while. When you were not a nice or superior or respectable person if you did not talk roses. I wanted to talk HABITAT, but eventually I succumbed ....
It has a scent. We have a wonderful rose garden close by, so one does not need to own the land and plant the bush to appreciate them, but I have now.
@Appleblossom, I've got a selected few roses in the garden, and also bits of it set aside as habitat (back boundary near the creek that runs behind our place). Doesn't need to be one or the other. 🙂
I guess I've never seen roses as a middle class thing. My family was more working class, but we and lots of our garden-keen family friends had roses. A couple of friends who were farmers had a beautiful big flower garden including lots of roses around their farmhouse with a good fence keeping the sheep in their rightful place. They've now semi-retired into town, and still have lots of roses.
Mum and Dad were really seriously keen gardeners. They got catalogues in from various specialist nurseries and were friends with specialist gardeners. So the ones in Mum's garden include some popular roses, and some unusual and interesting species. She's got a "Reine des Violettes", which is an old 1860s variety, and which I want to get a growing piece of. I've got another old one that Mum gave me growing here- "Anais Segales", an 1830s pouffy pink rose that's flowering like mad at the moment, then won't flower again until next spring.
@Smc It sounds really lovely as a country thing. I really like that you have both.
I grew up in mostly earth challenged environments. There was one country orphanage, but a lot of boarding houses and flats etc. SO I also did not have much know how ... when I got married.
A fellow who chatted up all the ladies, was a keen gardener, delivered lots of cut flowers from his own garden to my doorstep and eventually I succumbed to the flowers tho not to the man ... he is a good friend tho ... its a post 45 yo thing ...
I have Lamarque rose, which is an 1830's (very old) Climbing Noisette Rose.
