Roses and rose gardens appear prominently at several points in the novel and represent a motif whose meaning shifts as the secrets of the Turner tragedy are revealed. Isabel’s rose garden also highlights the juxtaposition of the English gardens of Halcyon against the rugged Australian landscape, reflecting the sense of dislocation that Isabel feels in Australia, as well as the tension between the colonial English transplants and the natural Australian landscape.

The first time that roses are mentioned is in reference to Nora, who ripped out the rose garden after her parents’ deaths and planted “a very different sort of garden—wilder, more profuse and tangled, with natives and introduced species combined” (103). At this point in the novel, Jess surmises that the roses in their formal plantings represent, to Nora, the formalism and distance of her parents, and one of her first acts as the new owner of Darling House is to rip out the rose garden. Later, this act will resonate differently upon the revelation that she buried her baby in the rose garden at Halcyon.