Regular readers may know that I recently moved to a row of derelict cottages. Beside one of the three porches is a rose. In summer it produces weedy, single pink flowers and I always tell myself that I must remove it.

After all, it is only a self-seeded dog rose planted courtesy of the birds, or growth springing from the wild root stock of a long-gone rose. Then autumn and winter arrive and the porch is studded with hundreds of tiny red hips, like garnets gleaming in sharp winter light. They look far too good to banish - so I spare it for another year.

Psychologists would explain my yearly change of heart by saying that the flurry of hips is appealing to my hunter-gatherer instinct - thereby satisfying the atavistic depths of my personality. This is a recently aired theory used to explain every woman's love of pink. It may be true.

However, the reason the rose on my porch produces hips in such abundance is due to its simple flower structure. Whenever you grow roses for colourful winter hips there's a downside because the flowers will either be short-lived singles, or loose semi-doubles - denoting their simple breeding. However, simply bred roses are healthy and disease-free.

Rosa moyesii is a lanky rose from Western China,but it produces showy, flagon-shaped red hips. There is a compact hybrid called Geranium' and this combines good olive-green foliage, blazing-red flowers and large, smooth hips.

I also like other moyesii' hybrids, including Eddies' Jewel' and Sealing Wax', for their glossy red hips. All could be accommodated at the back of an herbaceous border, or grown as specimens in lawn in smaller gardens.

Rugosa roses can also be accommodated although their round, apple-like hips are a less spectacular orange-red. Rugosas also produce hips in late summer which I find disconcerting.

Rosa Frau Dagmar Hastrup' is the most precocious hip-former of all. Her single-pink, cupped flowers often bear hips by early August. The taller Roseraie de l'Hay' has fragrant crimson-purple flowers followed by smaller, later red-orange hips. She is worth a place in any garden and rugosas, natives of sandy soil in Japan, are extremely disease-free and able to tolerate poor soil.

They also have good foliage, although the leaves can yellow in extremely alkaline conditions. Grow them as shrubs or hedges and, if you want hips, don't dead head.

Many larger roses produce clusters of red, flagon-shaped hips and these are more suitable for boundary edges. Among them is Rosa macrophylla, an elegant almost-thornless rose from The Himalayas. It will reach 15ft (5m) in height and the clear-pink flowers are followed by red flagons.

The thorny Rosa sweginzowii from North West China, is almost as tall at 12ft (4m). Bright-pink flowers are followed by clusters of smaller red hips - rather reminiscent of red chillies. The late-flowering and graceful Rosa davidii, from Tibet and Western China, is smothered in small, long orange-red hips and the pink flowers are also pretty.

Finally, Rosa pendulina, an almost thornless European rose, colours up well in autumn and also produces a heavy crop of red hips. These larger roses often display well in winter light when the bare branches stand out against the sky, backlit by low sun. So don't hem them in.

Hips are nutritious and highly attractive to birds, particularly tits and finches, so they will pull birds into your garden over many weeks. Their acrobatics are entertaining to watch, although your hips may disappear by Christmas.

The most bird-friendly hips in my garden are not red however. They are the burnished brown ones produced by Rosa glauca. The grey-green leaves of this medium-sized shrub rose blend well with silver foliage and this rose is very suitable for drier gardens where the soil is poor. R glauca also self-seeds, so you always have some plants to give away.

Some climbers and ramblers also produce small brown-red hips. These are always ignored by the birds and as a result they survive throughout winter.

Madame Grégoire Staechelin' is a sweet-pea scented climber capable of growing on a north wall. She may only flower once, but the nodding warm-pink flowers and dark foliage create a summer spectacle whether on a wall or pergola.

Wedding Day', a rampant white rambler, is another once and only rose that clings onto small brown hips.

Rambling Rector', a semi-double white multiflora' rambler, also produces hips. Both, are prolific and they could be grown on a fence, or trained over tall arches.

Whenever you are training any rose try to defy gravity and bend the new stems downwards, either by pegging them down to the ground, or by looping them along a fence, or by coiling them round pillars.

This slows down the sap and produces more bloom, avoiding lots of bare stem.

November and December are good months to wrestle with rose stems as they are still pliable enough to bend without breaking when you handle them.

December is an excellent month to order and plant bare root roses. These are planted when dormant in frost-free conditions between now and March.

They establish far more quickly than container-grown roses. If you select some hip-bearers those glimmers of red will punctuate the gloom and make the dark days of winter much more bearable. If frost or snow descend, any clear-red hips take on a tinsel-edged festive appearance. So I suspect that the garnet-hipped rose on my porch will be lighting up winter for many a year yet.

David Austin Roses has a full range, call 01902 376300 or visit the website: www.davidaustinroses.com