I'll try to remember to take pictures of my ROS in the morning and post them for you. I've cut all mine as standards. As jenny says, it takes patience to train a shrub into tree-form, but luckily ROS grow so fast you don't have to wait too long! As I recall, I started with whips from my mothers yard. (These are just the common, lavender-with-a-red-eye ROS.) I planted mine at the corner of the apartment building, and another set at the corner of the property aolong the fence and the alley. By the second summer, they were a good 5' high, and I began cutting off all the branches below 3-4'. By their third summer, they were all between 8 and 12' tall, a height they've maintained for the last three years. I simply prune off all the branches as high as I can reach. I had some vandalism, with trunks broken off on the plants in the alley, and I let one of the ones in the front grow with a fork in the trunk at about 3' high, but I think they are beautiful in this shape, especially in a small city garden. There are some drawbacks. The weight of the seedpods can sometimes pull the branches way down, and if there is a lot of seed pods left on the branches over winter they can catch a lot of snow, and the weight dragging down the branches can sometimes cause them to split off the tree. Mine have gotten so tall I can't clip off as many of the seedpods as I like, so I tie the "trees" together and to something -- drainpipe, fence post -- just to keep the branches from breaking off. By spring, I release them, and the all sigh and spread out a little bit. Pretty plants, and incredibly hardy for something so delicate looking. If I was doing it again, tho' I'd get one of those sterile versions.....

Don, I find many of the 'scented' ones listed here have no fragrance to me. (But growing up in a house of smokers, I have a "stunted" sense of smell!) I would recommend H. austrailus ssp. tenuipes. I recently did a huge hack job, pulling it out of my tree (I also grow 98% of my hoyas out of doors year round) because the pot hanger broke. I did a real 'hack job' on it, and threw the bits in a tin wash tub... only to have it root quickly and rampantly. I took bits and stuck them in the ground around my property, and they've put on new leaves; deep burgandy with a lime green dot at the tip. The leaves are aging now so the burgandy color is fading to the usual lime green. (SueTran this goes for you too!) I'd be happy to provide you both some cuttings from the mother plant as I am thinking about moving the 18 inch pot in to work and I can almost guarentee some damage from that transport! For the neglectful type (as I am, also) I usually pot my hoyas up in self-water pots. Mostly hanging pots, but I've branched out in many directions. I can't recommend H. bella for S-W pots because it has seasonal fluctuational needs for water and S-W tend to kill them in fall! I've hade austrailus, kerrii, pubicalyx RHP, multiflora, obovata, fungii and carnosa in S-W pots for nearly four years now, and they really do aid in the 'neglect' arena! Good luck, I've been branching out recently and this Neglect Post reminds me I need to go water my newly arrived plants! Good Luck, Don! Don and SueTran, leave a note here, I will contact you. GW ate my DropMeALine ability! Tough having been here since '97, lots of changes!!! (Sue, you can reach out and contact me!)

Hi Kim, You are welcome! You can pack the cutting in a pot in plastic bag only over a pot. Secure soil with paper tower over the soil and tape it to the pot so it doesn't shift. Wrap entire cutting/pot with the news paper to put in a snug box, fill it with crinkled news paper. Travels great.

By far, my most aggressive climber is australis ssp. tenuipes. I tried to train it to hang/trail, but it insists on growing UP! So I put a trellis against the north window in my GH and it covered it within a year or so. This is what it looked like overhead as it bloomed one year...Ultimately, I had to restart it as I think the roots got too cold one winter, but it's now about 2/3 of the way back up the trellis again! Denise in Omaha