The Rosarium at Mount Tomah Botamic Garden, it is outside of Sydney. Thers is also the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain within the city. Unfortunately, I didn't get to visit, although I took one of the city tour buses that went through the garden (lovely). You might also want to contact the Rose Society of New South Wales, they may have some recommendations. If you have time, do take the red and blue tour buses, they run regularly, have on-off priviliges, and are a good way to see a lot of the Sydney sites. Have a great time, that is a terrific time of year to visit!

Thanks for the positive comments, brom friends. Glad you enjoyed it - just sorry you weren't all there. LOL, Andrew, that 100% pay rise sounds good, but my maths is poor - what is 100% of $0? The alien hieroglyphics were most annoying. I now know that one should change the file to text only, when copying and pasting a Word document. The hieroglyphics substituted all the inverted commas, apostrophes, and dots...... which did not show in the preview. Lisa - I know nothing about why there weren't more Aussie hybrids available for sale. Probably distance to get them there would have been a hindrance. Shane Z was selling some of his hybrids, as was Peter T. I can only assume that due to restrictions on O.S. visitors' purchases, the sellers catered more for Aussies - the majority. And yes Gonzer, a splendid time was had for sure! Cheers, Kerry

What a lovely gift!! As Ginny said a bit more info about where in the state would help. One thing to be aware of is that spring is prime time for ticks in NH. Some of them are relatively large, but the small deer ticks are the ones that carry Lyme disease. When working in brushy areas I tend to wear long pants tucked into my socks, a long sleeved shirt and a hat, and when I am done working, change all my clothing and check myself thoroughly for ticks. Spraying clothing with bug repellent containing DEET helps also. Any ticks I find go into a vial of alcohol and clothing goes outside or into the washing machine after a quick check to find any obvious ticks. Lyme disease isn't something you want to pick up! Here's a link to a thread from last year suggesting several great NH nurseries (I am pretty sure all the listed nurseries are in the southern part of the state, but range from E to W,) and it also has a link to a 2006 or 2005 list of New England nurseries. Some of the northern MA nurseries may be close to your sister's place. Where you are in the southern part of the state will make a difference as it's probably about 2 hours from Keene to Portsmouth. Also, where you are will affect the seriousness of deer problems you have. In more suburban areas with less hunting and habitat, feeding from deer can be a problem. I'm in a rural area just a few minutes north of Concord and although there are lots of deer, the only plants that I can't grow due to deer are yews and Tricyrtis/Japanese toad lily. There are so many other food sources available that they don't bother to visit my gardens except to snatch a real treat. The seacoast is zone 6, but most of the southern part of the state is zone 5 with some of the hillier areas around Keene and my river valley location are probably on the border of zone 4, but all are in the southern half of NH. I mostly plant for zone 4, but sometimes zone 5 for things I really want with the knowledge that if we have a particularly cold winter and poor snow cover, I may lose them. I don't know what type of budget you have, but often soil improvements can be found locally relatively inexpensively. Many cities and towns have composting programs that make it available to residents. Local dairy farms will often deliver a huge dump load of manure, and horse manure can often be found for free if you are able to pick it up, but it will have more weed seeds. Mulch can also be found from various commercial suppliers by the dump load, which will probably be an important part of the low-maintenance aspect of the garden. Three acres is a large space, so you may want to consider some smaller heavy equipment. You may also be able to find someone to run a tractor for you for brushhogging, moving rocks, moving dirt, etc or if you are comfortable with machinery, bobcats and tractors can often be rented. We have been happy using Carl Mattews equipment in Boscawen. (I laughed when DH bought a small tractor many years ago, but as I age, the ability to move things with that tractor instead of my body makes it one of my favorite gardening tools now.) Some general thoughts on gardening in NH: Depending on where your sister's house is, you will probably have lots of granite (this is the "Granite State" after all) though on the coast and in the Merrimack Valley soil is sandier (or on some areas of the coast there is a layer of marine clay a few feet down) and there may be less rock in general. For building walls, rough field stone is often used while edging, patios, steps, etc are frequently made of dressed granite. It's something you have to keep in mind in planning a garden, that you will probably have a goodly amount of rock mixed in with soil and you may have shallow bedrock or boulders too large to move that you need to work around. We buy dressed granite from Swenson Granite Works in Concord, which is our local granite quarry for items like steps, but that may not be the best choice for you if you are looking to build something that needs dressed granite if you aren't close to Concord. With good planning fall color can last for 6 weeks or more, with the red maples starting the show in September and the blueberries, Fothergilla, Viburnums, oaks, and beeches ending the color at least a month and a half later. It is my favorite time of the year and well worth planning for in the garden. We are lucky to have many natives that are stunningly beautiful in autumn. Because so much of our year my garden is deeply snow-covered, I do try to grow plants that extend the season of interest and plant gardens that can be viewed from the house in winter. Herbaceous plants and short shrubs that stay green in cold weather usually aren't of huge value in my yard during winter since we often have more than 4 feet of snow on the ground. I try to plant a few things in warmer areas on the south side of the foundation that will bloom early like snow crocus, reticulated iris, and snow drops to get some early flowers. I plant taller evergreens (larger shrubs and trees) along with woody plants having interesting bark (beech/Fagus, birch/Betula, Stewartia, Acer griseum/paperbark maple, red and yellow twigged dogwoods/Cornus ) or interesting branch stucture (Pagoda dogwood/Cornus alternifolia) to provide winter interest. I also leave up my clematis obelisks year round since they tend to look nice against the snow. Many folks have bird feeders and bird-friendly shrubs to bring in some extra winter (as well as other seasonal) activity as well. I don't since we have blackbears emerging from dens in just a few weeks and they enjoy birdfeeders a bit too much. Tell us a bit more about your goals for your sister's garden beyond low maintenance - do you want easy or wheel-chair friendly paths or good visibility from a patio or porch? Does she have someone to help with basic mantenence such as an annual cleanup of easy care perennials like type 3 (hard prune) clematis or Baptisia? Will she want chair-accessible raised beds near the house for a few veggies and herbs? Is the garden all on one level? Are you looking to put in almost all trees and shrubs? Are flowers or scent or colorful foliage important? Hope that wasn't more info than you wanted or needed! Here is a link that might be useful: NH nurseries thread

Thanks re the ID of the cleome. I don't grow annuals so am not familiar with most of them. I did a Google search on 'annual flower thorny stems' and cleome did come up but I couldn't seem to find a picture of the foliage to confirm that it matched.... I had heard that they seed around a lot so I'll warn them about that. re the slope/lower garden - the topography of the property and area is complicated and confusing! The house sits lower than the street and the driveway is sort of a ramp off the street and runs close to their front porch - there is no front garden - there isn't even room for a 'necklace' of green' like we have between the driveway and front porch. The lot slopes from the front of the house to the back - but not to the extent of producing a walk-out basement. The lower garden is naturally lower than the rest and the step down was there when they bought the property. The land behind the fence appears to be higher ground. So they seem to be sitting in a bowl - but there doesn't seem to be water retention problems so I assume that the land continues to drop off somewhere beyond the lower garden. The seating patio in the corner is just steps from the stairs down from the deck. It's a nice place for morning coffee and afternoon and evening relaxing. The outdoor dining table is on the deck. The hanging baskets someone commented on in the second picture above are hanging off the deck. The compost are is - and needs to be - attractive because it is across from the end of the stair from the deck! I took that picture looking down from the deck while standing near the stairs.... The garden space is both attractive, functional and used efficiently.