Rosa Paris d'Yves Saint-Laurent

Rosa Paris d'Yves Saint-Laurent is a modern hybrid tea rose that pays tribute, in the most beautiful way, to Yves Saint-Laurent's legendary perfume. It bears beautiful roses with a perfect, beautifully turbinate shape, in an uncompromising azalea pink. The roses are as refined as they are subtly scented. Dressed in robust and disease-resistant satin foliage, this well-branched shrub blooms from May until the first frost. It is beautiful in a mass planting, and its glamorous flowers have excellent vase life.

Rosa Paris d'Yves Saint-Laurent 'Meivamo' is a modern bush rose obtained by Meilland in 1996. This dense bushy and upright shrub is balanced. It reaches a height of about 80cm (32in) with a spread of 50 to 60cm (20 to 24in) at maturity. It has a rapid growth rate. It produces strong, thorny, and well-branched stems that bear elegant foliage. The leaves are initially bronze before turning a satin green, with leaflets carried by purple petioles. The foliage is disease-resistant. Throughout summer, the plant continuously produces large flowers with a diameter of 13cm (5in), with a regular turbinate shape typical of hybrid tea roses. They consist of 30 to 35 petals of a uniform, light and warm pink colour, and open to a very tight centre. They are carried at the end of long shoots from the current year or by those that emerge from 2-year-old stems. The rose will flower continuously if faded blooms are regularly removed. The repeat-flowering is distinguished by a complex and pleasant aroma, which is reminiscent of the feminine fragrance created in 1983 by Yves Saint-Laurent. The perfume was based around the rose, skilfully combining wisdom, romance, and innocence.

With its superb pink colour and subtle fragrance, Rosa Paris d'Yves Saint-Laurent deserves an equally elegant setting near the house. Light-flowering perennial plants (autumn asters, foxgloves, penstemons, paniculate gypsophila), grasses, and nepetas, are ideal for enhancing its beauty and accompanying it late in the season. For example, pair it with Geranium 'Rozanne', G. 'Pink Cloud', G. grandiflorum, panicum, Nepeta 'Walker's Low', and campanulas. It will look good in isolation, for example in a group of 3 plants, in the middle of a bed of silver dust, aubrietas, or Cerastostigma plumbaginoides that will bloom successively around its base from spring to autumn. A pretty herbaceous clematis with blue flowers (Clematis heracleifolia) will enhance its pink roses. Its flowers make chic bouquets, in the company of soft pink peonies, iris, and white lilac.