Thanks Wattleblossom. I'm always particularly interested in your experience as we are dealing with the same climate. And as my block is ringed with full grown gums, everything has to cope with some shade.

Meryl, you might already grow Mutabilis, but if you don't this is another rose which flowers for a long time and takes some shade. It never looks any good in photos, which is perhaps why it isn't more widely grown.

Longview nursey at Wentworth Falls has a good range of Swanes potted roses just in. OK, they're twice the price of the rubish in Kmart Katoomba, but very good quality.

I have planted mutabilis three times and three times the rabbits have said "For us? You shouldn't have!" before eating them to the ground.
I simply love Mutabilis but I have a serious rabbit problem where I am located, roses are one of their favourite foods and mutabilis is obviously the equivalent of caviar. These days, my garden consists of what the rabbits don't eat, plus roses encircled by chicken wire. It isn't a good look but what can you do?
If we ask Sandie nicely, she might post her picture of mutabilis which is the only one I have ever seen to do it justice.
Re Swanes, our minds evidently think alike. Have a Swanes order which needs collecting this week!
Thanks Wattleblossom.

Have a freind who had a hare problem. He contacted the DPI and they gave him this recipe:
12 eggs
very old acrylic paint.

Apparently the eggs go off and combined with the old paint gives off a smell that they do not like.He would then splash a small amount of this around the base of plants he wanted them to keep away from.
We are yet to try this ourselves.
Yes and I did ask, "Do you smell it "? His reply was, "no". mabye due to the small amounts?
Thrips Wife Anne

Meryl, I obviously don't get out enough as I've never seen a rabbit in the upper mountains. Seriously though, I'm sorry you're having so much trouble with them, and that you can't grow Mutabilis. Do you grow any rugosa roses? If so, do they have less appeal? To the rabbits that is.

Thrip, I wouldn't know where to find the old paint...but do let me know if you ever try out the recipe yourselves.
Wattleblossom, I'd never seen rabbits about either until about ten years ago when first Katoomba Golf Course then the Christian Convention next door to me left huge piles of felled tree trunks about, providing perfect, totally safe cover for rabbit metropolises to establish. The piles have finally been removed but the rabbit problem is now past help. The lands board (or whatever the appropriate body is called) offered a program of poisoned carrots which shut us all up as soon as we'd had a moment to think about our kids, dogs, etc.
Rugosas seemed like the answer. I figured all those thorns would be a turn off for soft noses. Put in a hedge of Frau Dagma Hastrup, and singles of Fimbriata, Agnes and Alba. Fimbriata in particular seemed totally safe after putting up tall leafless stems thick with thorns with the foliage and flowers way up top out of rabbit reach. Ha! They chewed straight through the thorns till the stems broke and the greenery hung down comfortably within reach. My rugosas, like the rest of the roses, are now behind chicken wire.

Rabbits- the remedy is to go to Bunnings and buy a couple of meters of bird netting and make a little cage around the bush. They can't handle getting tangled in it.
It works well.

Sounds like a good idea, Fran, but how do you hold your cage up/in place? The only good thing about the chicken wire is that it is fairly easy for a klutz to put in place.

Those bamboo stake thingys that you can buy in Bunnings do the trick.
It's funny how they like to eat some and not others.
Pinkie is a real favorite here.