Rosa Love Song - Floribunda Rose

The 'Love Song' Rose is a modern floribunda still rare in the European horticultural trade. It offers so-called 'blue' roses whose unusual colour, a fairly deep mauve-lavender, does not fade in the sun, unlike many other purple varieties that turn grey. This bush is so floriferous that it almost disappears under bouquets of large peony-shaped flowers. Clad in ample, shiny dark green foliage, the shrub, bushy and nicely rounded, produces magnificent flowers that last a long time in a vase.

'Love Song' is a modern bush rose with large clustered flowers obtained by American rose breeder Tom Carruth in 2013. This variety forms a bushy shrub, as tall as it is wide, and quickly reaches about 70 cm (28in) in all directions at maturity. It produces green, sturdy, thorny and well-branched stems, which bear abundant foliage, ample, of a fairly deep and glossy green. Throughout the summer, if care is taken to remove faded flowers, the plant produces waves of pointed mauve buds that open into very beautiful flowers 11 cm (4in) in diameter, whose cup-shaped, very double, slightly irregular form, opening onto a tight heart, recalls the curve of hybrid tea roses. They are composed of numerous intense mauve-lavender petals with bluish reflections, gracefully fringed at the edges. Their fragrance, light for a blue rose, is rather lemony. They are grouped in bouquets of 3 to 5 and carried at the end of long shoots of the year or emerging on 2-year-old stems.

This 'Love Song' rose is in the same vein as 'Charles de Gaulle', 'Sissi', 'Mamy Blue', 'Waltz Time' or 'Claude Brasseur', with which it can compose a very pretty massif with a thousand shades of pink-purple-blue enhanced by some shrubby salvias or penstemons in pink to fuchsia red. It will find its place in the garden of any flower lover, whether a beginner or an experienced gardener. With its retro charm and beautiful fragrance, it deserves a graceful setting and a place not far from the house. Some light-flowering perennials (autumn asters, foxgloves, penstemons), as well as grasses, lavenders and nepetas, are ideal for enhancing its beauty and accompanying it late in the season. For example, combine it with a red or garnet rose ('Charles de Mills', 'Papa Meilland', 'Roseraie de l'Haÿ', 'Hansa'), their colours and fragrances will compose a very beautiful symphony. With a little audacity, you can also try the marriage of mauve and soft orange or yellow, with a rose such as 'Danaë' or 'Lady of Shalott'. Simple and easy-to-grow perennials such as Geranium 'Rozann'e, Geranium 'Pink Cloud', Nepeta 'Walker's Low' and campanulas will accompany it for much of the warm season. It will look good in isolation, for example in groups of 3 plants, as well as in a large pot on your terrace or balcony. Its flowers make beautiful romantic bouquets, in the company of pink peonies and white lilacs.