'Backseat Romance' has excellent vigor. And given room will readily form a 4' clump. Very good general northern hardiness and toughness. Without specifically tracking bud count, it does seem quite good. Scapes are quite good-- seems to easily achieve 4-way branching on good years. Have not actively checked for 5-way but I would not be shocked if it does produce some. Although blooms do occasionally open over top of each other, usually there is a smattering of blooms across the clump instead a thorough covering. Spent blooms are wet. I have not seen it rebloom (zone 5).
Bloom color and form consistency pretty good. Color can have a bit of a grape coloration to it, though amount of redness present can vary. Color clarity is quite good; every now and then will see a couple blotchies; vertical veining is noticeable; and blooms do dullen and lose some appeal with fading.
Petals have a thin trim edge of white. Whitewash of the eye ties nicely to the petal edging. Yellow to green throat is usually visually dominated by yellow though the green can be a nice adder, especially in the morning. At least some pleasingly pleated ruffling is usually present. Presentation of the petals is consistently quite flat with maybe a little recurve. Sepals consistently highly recurved. Overall it has a pleasing, though not particularly eye-popping, display.
This dl would be a good choice in the northern garden as a complimentary plant to neighboring attention-grabbing plants. A hybridizer could find several aspects of the bloom useful: whitewashed eye, petal trim edging, refined crimping and ruffling, flat petals, and color clarity-- especially considering the good plant and scape.
