devon gardener: thank you for the 2 recs! I will look them up pronto. ann: that's amazing about your 4 bloom cycles with pruning Leander. I wonder if having a real winter helps with the rebloom. We have let our Leanders grow for probably 4 yrs without a trim, but it didn't improve the repeat. In fact, we started trying to trim them back every 2-3 yrs to see if the repeat would get better. Our best repeats have followed the winters with the heaviest rainfall (El Nino years). It's a rose worth keeping even with only a massive spring bloom - magnificent! I agree with you about RMV - I think the earlier imports of grafted Austin roses were generally healthy (all the roses I bought in the early 1990's thrived. When the English roses became quite popular, say from 1996 on, many were weak (& often mislabelled!). I had particularly bad luck with Star roses. Hopefully now the bigger nurseries are paying attention and cleaned up their rootstock. I have had good luck with some ownroot Austins, but certain varieties are hard to get going.

G'day LiezelG, Of the three roses that you are asking about, I have direct experience with The Reeve. It is a good rose, though I am not at all certain how large it will get even in a warm temperate garden. Mine is quite winter hardy here in my , cold Canadian climate, so I suspect that its mature size is not overly affected by winter die back as is the case with many other Austin roses. Its canes are fairly thin and flexible, so they arch over in a very pleasing manner. The longest ones I have seen are perhaps 2 meters. I am not at all certain it will make a climber if that is what you are looking for, but having said that, I suspect it would break laterals if it was trained along a fence. It is a delightful rose that I like very much. The link below is to a thread I started about The Reeve on the Forum last summer, images of my plant are included. With respect to The Generous Gardener and James Galway, I have researched them both and would love to try them if only I had more room. Both get good reviews for health and rebloom from people who grow them. The description for JG on Help Me Find Roses begins: "Tall, climbing, upright..." It is however said to have stiff canes, grows to 3 meters or more and is most often pictured as a stand alone shrub, or a pillar rose if you do a google image search. Bloom colour is said to be quite variable, ranging from apricot-orange to lavender-pink. It is not often noted for strong fragrance in reviews I have read. But it has a very beautiful very double old fashioned flower form. The Generous Gardener is likely the rose to choose if you want a large climber that you can train on a fence. It generally gets excellent ratings for health, bloom quantity, bloom frequency, fragrance and vigour. It is often pictured as a climber on a wall, espaliered, or on an arch. Colour is listed as light pink but it appears to fade to almost white. Flowers are looser and more blousey than JG. Hope this helps a little. By the way, you mentioned The Swan in your initial post. I grew Swan many years ago, but lost her to a harsh winter. I have been looking for a replacement ever since, but so far no luck. And just to note, we may have access to more Austins in North America than you do, but the down side is there are so many to choose from, there is no room to grow all the ones we'd like. Cheers, Rick - A Hopelessly Addicted Early Austin Connoisseur Here is a link that might be useful: A Rose That Is Pleasing Me Greatly

How is growing callistemon different from any other plant that like full sun? First of all, let's separate the issue of growing containerized woody plants -- and trees in particular -- from growing containerized herbaceous plants like philodendrons, orchids or succulents. The root structure of a tree is very different from the root structure of a houseplant. A tree needs to sink a deep taproot into the soil that will be of sufficient foundational mass to keep the tree windfast in all weather conditions. Often, the above-ground portion of a tree is only the "tip of the iceberg," with the majority of biomass being underground. So the sapling's first order of business is to create that long taproot. The art of bonsai is largely concerned with the special problems of retraining a young tree's root system in a way that redirects its energy and allows it to succeed in a container. Any tree grown in a container is a bonsai (whether you intend it to be or not), but without training, it will soon starve itself by putting all its energy toward producing more root mass than what the limited soil volume of a container can support. If you are familiar with bonsai practices, I don't see why you couldn't grow callistemon in this manner. The cultivar really doesn't matter, because the top portion of the plant will be drastically pruned. "A lot of light" is not the same as sun. Glass used in modern windows, for example, lets in lots of visible light. Yet it is unsuited for good plant growth because it is coated with a Low-E coating that excludes the ultraviolet and infrared ends of the electromagnetic spectrum as an energy efficiency measure. Both these components of sunlight are important for photosynthesis and flowering. If grown inside, you would need high-pressure sodium and metal halide lights. With a long growing season, you could perhaps grow it as an outdoor/indoor bonsai that sits under a broad spectrum florescent during the winter.

Hi I have 3 planted and plan to plant 50 more. I paid $4.99 each and bought them from a wonderful e-bay seller by the name of Donovan. He sells more than one type and is very knowledgeable. I have bought several from him as well as tons of other things and everything arrives healthy and thrives. But they are starter plants about 6-12" tall. But one that I bought and planted April 2011 is now 4' tall! WellSpring Gardens - store name and wellspring100 - seller id The hummers and butterflies adore them. I do know that there are all kinds just as Renee said. Rena'