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'Dolly Parton' rose Reviews & Comments
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I am thrilled to report that I may actually have a "good" Dolly Parton bush under that magnificent bloom. Second year grafted plant is looking good and is throwing up two basal canes at the moment. When I grew Dolly many years ago those basal canes were very hard to come by. I'm excited to have any at all yet alone two!
Update two months later: Dolly has continued her spectacular performance through July and August, My one plant has given me ~15 blooms with good stems this year and that special Dolly fragrance is always there. Cut a little tight Dolly can last a week and even longer in the vase. In years past I would be happy with just a few good blooms on Dolly. I don't know how I ended up with an awesome specimen of Dolly Parton but I do feel fortunate.
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In the remake of Beauty and Beast, the heroine Belle exclaims to the Beast: 'A lifetime sentence...just for a single rose!' . She said this because her father was thrown in jail for life for stealing a bloom from the haunted garden. But immediately I thought of this rose, Dolly Parton. As long you own it, for its lifetime, plan on being sentenced to spraying and coddling it. It will will reward you with these magnificent blooms...huge, fully petaled with elegant and complex recurve, prissy high centers, sumptuous fragrance, long lasting, in a incredibly saturated scarlet orange. But while bloom has absolutely every desirable quality in spades, the underlying plant has none. The plant itself will be a thorny vision of Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree, a weak sapling making a futile effort to carry these enormous gaudy ornaments. It will require every sort of life support you can muster...Insecticide, fungicides on rotation, rich soil, amendments (alfalfa and fish emulsion please!), perhaps some support stakes to prevent collapse, warmth (does Amazon carry a rose heater?) , moist air (humidifier?).. for it to struggle along. It has the unique ability to get blackspot and mildew with equal ease. So keep up the intensive care regimen, in my mind this rose is worth it!
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In my experience, both parents are much healthier than your description of DP. I did grow 'Fragrant Cloud' long before its' alleged decline in vigor which is being complained of recently. It did need some support from fertilizers but grew into a large bush not notably more diseased than other HTs.
Is DP, in your opinion, really any improvement over FC?
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In the 1990s a public rose garden I lived near (Zilker Park, Austin TX) had a bed of each rose, Dolly Parton and Fragrant Cloud. FC was by far the better plant, it's not even close. But I think FC back then was one of the easiest and most rewarding roses of all, while DP has always been a diva. I grew FC myself for many years, it was everything I could want in a modern rose...healthy, robust, generous, a very attractive bush plant always loaded with bright, hugely scented blooms. It's a shame that FC is in decline, I'm still trying to find a healthy plant of it. But the individual bloom of DP is larger, more saturated in color, higher centered , and petals more recurved, with the exact same wonderful fragrance inherited from FC....it really is most impressive, and for that, it's still worth growing.
From Oklahoma, DP inherited a propensity to mildew...but I agree, Oklahoma is even a better garden rose than DP.
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The Fragrant Cloud down the street is a slam dance performer. It is grafted with no special care. I think there are still amazing clones of it out there.
FC stays in its lane. Both Dolly Parton and Oklahoma get over 8' here. They're obscene plants. But, yeah, the blooms are super cool on both.
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I need obscenely tall plants to repel rabbits, will grab Oklahoma if I see it cheap at local store. Thank you for the info.
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Be sure its not tender there. I live next to temperate rainforest so mileage may vary.
I think Selfridges is a harder tall beast HT.
If HT is not a requirement, Robusta is #1 at being a self-supporting monster that repels critters. I dislike that rose so much, but its a living fence for sure.
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Thank you. Dave and Deb Boyd grew Oklahoma in their zone 5, Montana.
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I love this review. It reminds me of how I feel about Stainless Steel. You baby the heck out of it just to get those stunning, perfect blooms you know it can produce. 100% worth it when you get them but a wreck the rest of the time. I planted DP late last year, and she just sat there because it got too hot to do much else. We will see how she performs after a good pruning, fertilizing, and cooler temps.
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Stainless Steel got the shovel from me. Had difficulty opening in all sorts of weather, and the dingy pale gray showed every blemish. I actually far prefer Dolly Parton, her blooms are super impressive and weather/heat resistant, it’s just the plant that is rather puny.
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delightful and helpful review
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I could not agree more with the Comments below. Dolly requires an oversize investment - which in turn will provide you with a few (and only a few) gorgeous orange/red huge blooms with incredible fragrance. She's not really a grower or a bloomer, but there will be at least one jaw-dropping bloom per season.
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When I visited Joe and Agnes Winchel in Shreveport, LA in late May 1979, his name for this rose was "Fantastic Fragrance." And it is very fragrant, seeming to draw its fragrance more from 'Fragrant Cloud' than from 'Oklahoma'.Joe had three or four large plants of this, about 3 1/2 feet tall x 3 feet wide, each with twenty or more hips nearly the size of golf balls, some hips with small splits in the side because they had so many seeds. Those plants had leaves all the way to the ground--and were covered with large, nearly perfect flowers--the second flush of blooms for the season (which begins early in Shreveport). It was very impressive.
In the right conditions, this rose is a stunner.
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Yes, lovely form, great color and fragrance but Powdery Mildew is a problem here in California's low desert climate.
It's descendant, 'Ain't She Sweet', is much better more Mildew resistance but it has not proven fertile in either direction for me.
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Aint She Sweet was one of the worst HTs I had ever grown here. Greedy barely covers how few blooms and basals it makes.
Dolly Parton is huge here, and it grows very well. But it has immense mildew, even for here, and the blooms drag on the ground from the floppy plant and over-sized rain catchers it calls blooms.
Fragrant Cloud just seems easier, even if it is a much older rose, to deal with, than its kids listed above. If we are comparing orange-red fragrant HTs.
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#3 of 6 posted
2 FEB 16 by
LonRob
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Powdery Mildew, foliage that is dull and less than attractive, beautiful flowers, and hardly any scent, and then only on a HOT day in late afternoon. Vigorous and good growth pattern. Overall, though, not impressed. Dolly deserves better!
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To be fair, when it was introduced, it was a big deal. Over-the-top HTs were in style, and fungicides were a common staple.
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#5 of 6 posted
2 FEB 16 by
LonRob
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Excuse me, fair? It is still talked about as though a "great" rose. Uh....no
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I meant from when it was named after her. I meant, to be fair, when it was named after her, it was considered a dazzling HT. I do not think it is a great rose now. Look at my above review.
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