This rose is famous for the changing colours - it opens up saffron yellow and gradually changes to a deep strawberry pink. It doesn't seem to mind the cooler days and nights - there are quite a few blooms out right now. You need a bit of space to grow this rose, it can grow into a HUGE shrub over time. I've seen one that would be 5 metres in width and close to 4 metres in height, probably grown on own-root - but it looks fantastic in full bloom with all the different colours at the same time. Mine is grafted and is manageable!

This one opens up fawn and gradually changes to mauve-pink. They're usually in small clusters in the spring & summer, in the autumn there's the occasional cluster too. Probably an experiment trying to get the elusive "blue" rose by the breeder! Like most of the mauve roses, it has a pleasant fragrance. The bush is quite short & spreading so its well suited to the front of the bed of roses.

This is a lovely old rose, its the most colourful as far as the autumn leaves are this year. Its usually Belle de Crecy that outshines this particular rose, but BdC didn't come through the drought very well. We had to irrigate through the night and missed noticing it was missing out on a drink.

We have three of these shrub roses in a row, they're big arching shrubs with plenty of thorns and these beautiful single blooms edged in pink. There are plenty of maroon hips sharing the canes, but its not that difficult getting past the thorny canes on my morning walk. This morning I had to chase the canes in the strong wind to capture at least one shot worth presenting.

We've had good follow up rains since the big downpour a few weeks ago. All of the roses are making a recovery as we approach the first official day of winter!

This bush is flowering now, must be quite confused with the climate - it certainly isn't spring here - its still late autumn!

Actually I was trying to zoom in on a tiny garden spider, but it saw me coming and hid amongst the petals. Instead you just get a very close look at the colour of the petals in autumn of this floriferous floribunda rose called "Moonsprite".

I always love it when this rose starts its autumn colours - lucky it still had leaves to turn colour! We had such a long drought that I didn't expect much of an autumn for pretty autumn colours. The leaves were really "blowin' in the wind" when I was attempting to take a few shots with the cam!

I'm not sure if I have the right daisy, but this seems to be the nearest looking one in my books. Mine has silver foliage. Its the toughest little bush, we never water it, so it survives just on rain water - and as we've just had a very long drought, it went for 6 months with nothing but the morning dew! This is one to consider if you're thinking of planting a water-safe garden. It will grow from softwood cuttings.

We have a few different correas growing in various bush gardens. This one I grew from cutting to make sure I got the same colour. Its an upright twiggy bush, not quite a metre tall, and there's a row of them that I planted. Its very similar to the Correa pulchella which covers a huge area in one of the bush gardens, forming a big mat of green most of the year, but in flower right now and through winter. I like the effect of low growing matting plants with tall trees that I used in that particular bush garden. The row of Dusky Bells edges a section of that bush garden.

Weighed down by the raindrops this pretty rose has been budding up for another brief showing before I start with the pruners. Time to think about checking all my pruning equipment - mid-June and I'll begin the long haul peppered with wet days spent indoors (to give my back & arms a rest). It usually takes me 6 weeks for the actual pruning and the big heap of prunings will rise to a mammoth size by the end of the job!

Clair Matin is a climbing rose that can be trained into a large shrub.

Single roses seem quite unperturbed with rain on the petals, at least this little rose doesn't seem to mind. This one is quite a low grower (knee height), the blooms are quite large and showy and often borne in small clusters. They make a refreshing change amongst the large many petalled blooms and actually look similar to a clematis.

We planted it amongst a group of native plants quite a few years ago and this one seems to flower continuously, which attracts the birds (particularly the New Holland honeyeaters) and bees. The shrub reaches a couple of metres in height and width and has soft green foliage.

Ours is a tree but in the wild they usually stay a bushy shrub and grow on the road verges across most of southern Australia, from east to west. They flower throughout the whole year, there's always flower spikes somewhere on the tree. The seed cones are quite characteristic and I've often featured them in my PAD galleries.

P. rodneyanum (an Australian species) which I have growing both as a ground-cover on the edges of the rose garden and in a hanging pot. Works well both ways. It seems to always be in bloom and is so easy to grow with no special requirements apart from good drainage.

This rose needs some space, it arches with long prickly canes and catches you as you pass by if you're not careful. I've planted this rose alongside a birdbath and it works rather well being a similar height. The birds love the protection while they dry themselves. The rose is always in bloom but they don't drop off cleanly when they've finished blooming, you have to have the pruners in your hands as you wander past this rose. I forgot to give it a sniff, not sure if its scented...will check and add comment later.

One of several roses brought to Europe from the Orient, which were then crossed with the once-flowering old European roses. This one has quite a few names, e.g., "Slater's Crimson China", "Belfield", "Chinese Monthly Rose" "Old Crimson China" & "Rosa chinensis semperflorens". I tend to use the last name of this group, but it may have been one of those referred to as "The Last Rose of Summer" as it blooms forever! Long believed extinct, it was rediscovered by rosarian Richard Thomson in Bermuda in 1956. A photo without the raindrops can be found on this link (page 1) http://www.pbase.com/yvonneii/spring_garden_walk_06 Remember, May is autumn down under!

AKA "First Class" and "White Magic" its a spreading floribunda rose which bears small clusters of these semi-double blooms opening the palest lemon and becoming snowy white with age. There's a slight whiff of a fruity fragrance. Mine hasn't got that tall, perhaps 4 ft, because I am taller than the bush! Ideal grown as a bordering plant in a rose garden, not really suited for plants at its feet because of its spread. Like all white roses, very beautiful to see in the moonlight.

Pictured here amongst the kalanchoe. I discovered the first bloom out this morning & picked it because it was partly hidden amongst the wet fronds and you couldn't see its face. I popped it amongst a pot of kalanchoe to get a better go at photographing it. I hope you like it. The proper name is Iris unguicularis, such an ungainly name, this one has the extra name of "cretensis" because of the splochiness and irregular pattern. I have a clump growing at the feet of a very tall (at least 10 ft) rose bush called "Cannes Festival" which is a gorgeous deep gold, but they don't really compliment each other, there's too much space between their levels of production. The iris compliments a couple of miniature roses instead.

This rose always produces heaps of hips quite early in the season, often there's roses & hips at the same time. Its quite a nice looking rose - rose pink in small clusters - on a chunky well leafed shrub. I could imagine this making a wonderful & impenetrable hedge

as it gets quite tall - perhaps 7 ft high. If you want to see how the rose looks, take a look in my lengthy list of rose galleries. This one grows along the horse-yard fence - Dick had to move the fence back a metre and electrify it, the horses kept trimming all the roses & he grew tired of my complaining, especially when they cleaned up all the buds of a spring-only flowering rose!

I love this rose, the bush is so compact and neat in the garden. This one was planted alongside a garden seat and its a rose that gets noticed because of this. The bush stays quite small - about a metre tall and wide, and the blooms keep well in all weathers. The colours change with the season, in spring there's more of a blush pink and now in the autumn it's more of a pale gold. As you would expect of a favourite rose, it is scented.

One of the last few hybrid teas left in the rose garden. A good performer with a luscious scent but not that well known. My bush is 17 years old being in the first group of roses that got planted in the original section of the garden before I started expanding annually. I started with 120 roses of various types and now there's more than 500. Dick won't let me extend the garden, so to add something new something old gets shovel pruned. At present I'm wandering around the garden looking for spots for 3 new additions - Fragrant Delight will be safe - for now.

As well as the attractive leaves, there's no thorns so its a difficult one to train upright and naturally trails making it an excellent choice for a weeping rose and with some help, great for an archway or anywhere there's traffic. The blooms are borne at the ends of canes in small clusters. You need to keep it dead-headed, the blooms don't drop off neatly. The flowers are a flush pink and semi-double. Mine shares a trellis with a beautiful deep blue clematis and that helps lace Renae to the trellis.

We planted this in the corner of a paddock and it has taken off. It will grow into quite a large shrub because every cane that comes in contact with the soil puts out roots and grows as well. This is the time of year it blooms & this particular shot is of buds about to open. I had to pick a sprig and photograph it on our side balcony, the spot where it grows was exposed to gale-force winds at the time of my stroll around the garden.

An Australian bred rose, bred by the same breeder as "Lorraine Lee". Our SS grows alongside Queen Elizabeth and is almost as tall, but SS has smaller leaves & twiggy growth. We planted a patch of species gladiolus at the feet and they often flower together. I've never pruned our SS, just cut out any dead wood and deadheads.

This little tree (more of a large shrub than a tree) has fruit or fruit forming the entire 12 months of the year. Its a very rare day that we wander out for a lemon and there isn't one to be found. At the same time you can find lemon blossom, green lemons and ripe golden yellow ones all over the tree. An Italian friend of ours loves to cut them and sprinkle salt over the flesh and she eats them like that! We often give our visitors a bag full to take home. Every now and then I strip the tree of ripe fruit and we give them away at our front gate.

The Cordyline Australis growing at the side of the main pathway to the rose garden is budding up - its also called a "Cabbage Tree" and comes from New Zealand. Our tree is quite large and multi-trunked at the top of quite a tall main stem. It looks a bit like a palm tree. We've had top-knot pigeons nest in the tree for quite a few years - their eggs often fall out of the nest onto the pathway.

This is an experimental rose by the German nursery Kordes, trying to include the blue pigment into the rose, the one colour that is missing from the spectrum. It is the bluest rose in my rose garden, though it hates wind, rain etc, the bush is very pretty when in bloom. Yes, it is fragrant!

Cornelia is a massively big hybrid musk, it sends out very long canes and joins up with another rose the other side of a very wide pathway, and turns up amongst other very large rose shrubs metres away from the original spot. The flowers are an apricotty-pink borne in clusters at the ends of the canes and is one of my favourites in the garden. Here's just a very small handful of hips that caught my eye (close enough to photograph) on my walk around this morning.

A very tall upright shrub/climber which really needs support in its early years. It sends up long thorny canes like a climber which I tend to wind back in on itself. The blooms are quite large and so are the hips which follow. This particular bloom hasn't fully opened yet.

This hakea shrub always flowers in April-May and there are still quite a few new buds still to finish ripening. When the flowers have finished an almond-like nut with a seed forms on the canes and last for years. The shrub reaches 9 metres eventually if it doesn't blow over in the wind. In some parts of Australia this plant is regarded as a weed, but the flower is a favourite and people still like to include it in their native planting.

This is one of several shrubs produced for roadside planting in urban areas. The bloom is a simple pink with white centre and the bush very thorny, ideal for its purpose of restricting passage way of pedestrians on busy roads. The bush would make an ideal hedge for the same purpose. The blooms quickly become hips all through the rose season.

Bred in France in 1985.

A shrub which towers over a few of my other roses giving welcome filtered shade

to some of my other more delicate rose bushes. It only flowers in spring and what a display it has then, this is followed by a myriad of hips, very eye catching too.

Suited to a mixed border of roses & perennials if you have the space.

Bred in Germany by Kordes in 1940, so its been around for a while.

A climbing rose with flexible canes making it a very easy climber to handle & train.

In spring it supplies us with huge clusters (50+) of single pink and white roses, a sight to see!

Some flower photos exist in my most recent ROSES galleries.

The leaf colour is always best in May where we live