Costco has the Weeks roses in twofer pack for about $17. My mom told me she just got Julia Child and Easy Does It in her twofer. Usually they will put complementary roses in the twofers -- like 2 climbers or 2 floribundas that would look good together, etc.

It's been many yrs since I've seen "honest to goodness" bareroot roses. About 18yrs ago one of the local nurseries had raised beds with bareroots in some sort of soil medium. I never saw any I wanted. The newest nursery in town around 6-7yrs ago had them in wine barrels full of a light soil medium. They sold them for several dollars less as actual bareroots, and then potted them up around February in the pulp pots and sold them for more. They only did that once. Now they just pot them up like most of the nurseries do anymore.

Our biggest and best nursery here pots them in 5gal plastic cans, but the problem with theirs is, they fertilize with sulfate of ammonia. The plants gets big and beautiful, but you buy them and take them home, and by the end of our hot summer, they die. They used to use Osmocote, but I imagine that's just too expensive. I won't buy from them anymore.

The bareroot bagged roses are coming in all over. Some people like to call them "body bags" but I don't like to. I have better luck with the bagged bareroots than with some of the potted roses. I notice that all the places that sell the bagged bareroots are carrying a LOT less that usual. Lowe's used to have tons of the baggies, and quite a lot of the peat-potted bagged ones from Certified Roses. This yr, they have maybe half the baggie ones, and only about 2 dozen peat-potted ones, and very little selection. HD only got in about 10% of their usual selection, and nothing at all exciting. I also saw some at the Rite Aid pharmacy outside on tables. They seemed to have a lot, but they were the same ones Lowe's had. Boring-boring-boring!! Now I just have to wait til the Grocery Outlet gets in the giant boxes of the baggies. One yr they had some very unusual varieties. But most of the time, they just have the same old standbys.

The economy has caused many to cut back on non-essentials such as landscaping or gardening. Whie we may consider roses and gardening as being essential, younger folks and those with children are watching their pennies. As the garden centers and big box stores respond to this they cut back on inventory. There are fewer wholesale growers now so not much of a selection is available anymore.
The younger people are too busy and don't take time to garden. Thy're too busy on the computer, texting, tweeting, or playing games.
I've arranged to give my rose garden to an arboretum as I know it'll just be dug up and planted in uncared for grass.
I just inquired to the wholesale grower of the, now defunct, Dream Rose line on behalf of someone who requested information about them.
The grower replied,
"The Dream Roses were reinvented as Premium Roses for Home Depot a few years back.
Home Depot killed the program and left us hanging with 500,000 plants in the field.
They were ground up."

Too many things like this and they'll soon be no large wholesale growers. Small local growers and a few larger catalog nurseries will be the only sources of roses.
Homes and shopping centers will be taking over these growing fields.
Too many people in too much of a hurry who don't take time to
{{gwi:222504}}

I think it is also not only being busy with something else, but general lack of knowledge how to, hence the lack of interest in any gardening whatsoever. If you never grew anything when you were growing up, it is not likely that you will find it fun later in life, there simply is no need or drive to see things growing. Even keeping a lawn becomes too much hassle, at least in urban area here people nowadays just tile the whole yard and at the best have a few throw away pots with some pre arranged flower set-up.

Then there also are deeper cultural reasons, as gardening generally is a dirty occupation. Think of all the microbes, diseases, allergies and other scary invisible things! Not to speak of touching actual horse poop, as it is supposed to be a good fertilizer. If you spend 100$ a week for all sorts of creams, tonics, manicures and what not else, you generally are not sticking your fingers into a dirt, where all of that would come to nothing. Oh, and did I mention blisters?!

elemire,

A neighbor of mine paved over his entire backyard so he wouldn't have to be bothered cutting grass. On top of the macadam he put a carpet of fake grass. On top of the fake grass he put a picnic table. Unfortunately, in the summer the temperature on top of the macadam would hit 100 degrees F. making it unusable.

Fortunately, I've had some customers come in where I used to work saying their parents had gardened and now they had their own plots of land, they wanted to learn how. They were the fun ones!

When the artificial turf began being the new thing around here, they ran a photo of a little girl about to sit down on it in the sun. Someone wrote in to the paper saying the photographer should be brought up on child abuse charges. The turf can super heat on a very hot day to 140 degrees F. The Home Owners Association (FEH!) where my sister lives, was actually considering replacing the turf on their golf course with the stuff. They thought it would be cheaper in the long run. OK, hundred degree plus days, sometimes for a few weeks every summer and many acres of it. Thankfully, it was too expensive for them to actually do it, but the would have if they could. Argh!

We do not have the hot issue, but the tiling is still horrible, as it gets rather slippery from water/blown leaves/ice, and we get a lot of that. Near our old house someone had the entire front garden tiled with some horrible granite like stones. Apart that it looked like a graveyard, they could not even use it for half a season, as it was a bit sloping down and slippery as an ice skating track.