News & Updates:

Apart from their antiquity and relationship to our modern roses, many of the species provide us with attractive shrubs and much interesting and decorative material. The blooms vary greatly in colour and form, but, in the case of the species, except R. chinensis, they are rare after the lavish spring flowering. The foliage ranges in type beyond the realization of most people, and includes leaf forms quite unlike that which one expects on a rose. The hips, too, vary tremendously in colour, form, and size, from small ovoid orange seed-pods to large dark-red globular types, and others that are quite huge and urn-shaped.

Lorraine Lee is probably the rose most commonly grown as a shrub in Australia, yet it is almost unknown in Europe and America. Its evergreen habit, freedom and constancy in blooming, and its delightful perfume, coupled with its tolerance to trimming much in the way of other shrubs, make it ideal for this purpose.

In England, Germany, and America a new group of roses is being developed. They are tall-growing bushes, too big for conventional garden uses, and yet not of climbing habit. Most of them are hybrids of very hardy species, and they are useful as shrubs or in the back row of large flower beds.

The most recent development in types of roses has been made in the United States of America. The new group, known as Grandifloras, consists of varieties that have flowers not much larger than those of Floribundas, but they are borne singly on fairly long stems. Queen Elizabeth II and Roundelay are already very popular overseas.