Rosa Lyon Lumières

The Lyon Lumières® Rose offers very large turbinate flowers, with changing colours, with petals of a very pale cream pink with beige pink reflections, more or less punctuated with carmine pink. As it blooms, each rose gradually colours from deep pink to light red at the edges, giving it a unique personality, in a truly luminous two-tone blend. Not only are these roses very beautiful, they are also very pleasantly scented. They bloom from late spring to autumn, on a beautiful, very healthy, dark green satin foliage. Stunning in a mass planting, its roses are divine in a vase. A bush rose that will charm both rose enthusiasts and novice gardeners looking for easy-to-grow and maintain plants.

Lyon Lumières® ('Meivanae') is a bush rose with large flowers launched in 2019 by the Meilland rose breeder. This gently original variety was chosen by the partners of the Festival of Lights, held every year in Lyon on December 8th. Its awards are already impressive: it won three first prizes in the ARTS® (American Rose Trial for Sustainability®) Local Artist (USA), Best Grandiflora Rose Biltmore (USA) in 2020, and the 1st Prize Grandiflora SNHF (Société Nationale de l'Horticulture Française) in 2022.
With a bushy and upright habit, a bit stiff, it reaches about 80cm (32in) in height and 55cm (22in) in spread at maturity, with rapid growth. It produces strong, thorny branches that bear beautiful foliage divided into large, toothed leaflets, of a dark green satin colour. Its young shoots are slightly tinged with bronze. Throughout the summer, and until October if faded flowers are removed, the plant produces waves of 11cm (4in) flowers, whose turbinate shape and perfect symmetry recall its membership in the hybrid tea rose category. Fully double, they are composed of 30 satin petals whose colour evolves depending on the stage of blooming, the season and the temperature. Their fragrance is pronounced and delicious, Meilland describes it as follows: intense rose perfume with spicy, aniseed and peppery notes nuanced with a touch of verbena. The flowers are solitary, or more rarely grouped in small bouquets, borne at the end of long shoots of the year or emerging from 2-year-old stems. The foliage of this variety is healthy, even in cool and humid climates.

The 'Lyon Lumières' rose is superb in mass plantings, planted in groups of 5 plants, in large monochrome borders or in combination with white or pink roses. It also mixes well with shrubs, perennials and annuals such as catmints, bellflowers, phlox paniculata or tall foxgloves. It will be well showcased in front of a boxwood or yew screen, or, on the contrary, surrounded by a miniature hedge or a carefully organized maze, as in Italian or French gardens. You can also plant a herbaceous clematis with blue flowers such as Clematis heracleifolia or a Sollya heterophylla at its base in mild climates. Finally, its roses are stunning in bouquets, combined with lilies and hydrangeas in summer or asters in autumn.