Rosa 'Colette' - Shrub or Climbing Rose

The 'Colette' Rose or 'Meiroupis' is a modern creation with a romantic style that can be used as a large bush or a small climber. This rose has many advantages, combining robustness, hardiness, excellent disease resistance, flowers shaped in an old-fashioned way but resistant to rain, a fabulous salmon pink colour and a beautiful scent of Damask rose. It also offers well-filled foliage with a glossy dark green colour that perfectly enhances the flowering from early summer to the first frost.

The Colette Rose, sometimes marketed under the name 'John Keats', is a creation by Meilland dating back to 1994. The hybrid tea rose with clustered flowers won the Bronze Medal in Adelaide (Australia) in 2000. When trained and regularly pruned, it is a small sarmentous climber that will not exceed 2.50 m (8ft) in height. If not trained, it forms a beautiful 1.50 m (5ft) tall bush with a flexible and free habit. Its flexible and thorny branches are adorned with abundant foliage, with dark green, glossy, blackspot-resistant leaflets that are truly decorative. Its flowering is particularly abundant in June, and it generously blooms again in late summer. There is often a pause at the height of summer, in August. This rose produces bouquets of 3 to 5 roses with an 8 cm (3in) diameter, very double (120 to 130 petals), organised in quarters. They open in a cup shape and end up flat. The blossoming of the flowers is not affected by bad weather. Like old roses, these flowers exude a powerful scent. Their soft and warm colour ranges through all shades between coral pink, light pink, and apricot, sometimes with a touch of yellow in the centre.

The Colette Rose is also a hardy and undemanding plant, thriving in well-prepared ordinary soil. It will appeal to lovers of romantic and scented roses. It can also form a large bush without directing its growth, creating a romantic mass of flowers and foliage ideal for forming the backdrop of a perennial bed. It can also be paired with flowering shrubs (Shrubby Cinquefoils, Abelias, and Buddleias, ground cover roses…). It could also be imagined in a rose hedge, with large white or pink shrubs (Iceberg, Maiden's Blush) or purple (Charles de Mills, Young Lycidas...)