Rosa Alphonse Daudet Romantica 'Meirouve'

The 'Alphonse Daudet' Rose is a modern hybrid tea rose with wonderful English rose characteristics that requires light and space to fully thrive. This modern bush from the beautiful Romantica series bears large, fully double flowers that display an unusual but delicately sunny colour: predominantly soft mimosa yellow, they blush with a light orange hue around a delicately veined shrimp pink heart. Cloaked in dense and very healthy foliage, the bush proves resistance to diseases and is generous from summer until the first frost. A perfect rose to bring colour and fragrance to flowerbeds, as well as to balconies or terraces when planted in a lovely container.

'Alphonse Daudet' 'Meirouve' is a modern bush rose with large flowers obtained by Meilland in 1998, heralding the return of old-style roses to our gardens. This excellent variety received the First Prize in Tokyo in 1997. It is a dense shrub with a bushy and upright habit, reaching approximately 75 cm (30in) in height and 50-60 cm (20-24in) in width at maturity, with rapid growth. It produces a strong, thorny and well-branched stems, which bear abundant and elegantly crinkled foliage, semi-matte green, and are less susceptible to diseases. From May to October, if faded flowers are removed, the plant produces successive waves of beautifully shaped, cupped flowers with a diameter of 12 cm (5in), opening in quarters like English roses. Very full, they are composed of approximately 95 petals in a light ochre to mimosa yellow colour, tinged with orange pink, and are veined with light shrimp red at the tightly packed heart of the flower. They are solitary and borne at the end of long shoots from the current year or emerging on 2-year-old stems. The repeat flowering is characterised by a delicate fragrance of tea rose with fruity notes of peach and apple, and herbaceous hints of cut grass.

This 'Alphonse Daudet' rose, with its soft colour and subtle fragrance, deserves an equally graceful setting and a place not far from the house, either alone, planted in groups of 3 or in the company of other roses of the same vigour, white, peach or even mauve. Some perennial plants with light blooms (Autumn Asters, foxgloves, penstemons), as well as the silver foliage of sea cineraria or wormwood, grasses and catmints, are ideal for enhancing its beauty and accompanying it late in the season. For example, combine it with Geranium 'Rozanne', Geranium 'Pink Cloud', Geranium grandiflorum, Panicum, Nepeta 'Walker's Low' and campanulas. It will look great planted in a large pot on your terrace or balcony. Its flowers make beautiful romantic bouquets, alongside peonies and white lilacs.