Hi Windeaux, I did contact Rose Petals about my order last year, and requested either a replacement or refund for 6 of 8 roses (I think that was the number), and the nursery promptly appologized and issued a full refund for all of the plants...even the two I found acceptable. I completely agree with you that consistancy is a must! Nobody wants to buy from a seller that sends beautiful plants one time, and the next barely viable plants. Like I said in regard to RPN, I've had one good, one bad experience, but the bad experience was corrected quickly, so that's why I decided to try them again. One thing they do is list the number of plants of any one variety that they have in stock. I tried to pick varieties that had a large number in stock, in hopes that they would chose one of the better looking ones to mail, and give the others more time to grow out. That being said, I received two large orders this year from a vendor with an excellent reputation, and received barely rooted twigs for about 5 of my plants (literally about 2-3 inches tall and no branching) that promptly died a couple of days later. You just never know I guess, but there are certain nurseries that I have never received a bad plant from (High Country, Chamblees, ARE and Roses Unlimited pop to mind). I'm happy to accept a plant that is small, but is rooted well enough that I can put it in my greenhouse and baby it for awhile. We just have to trust the sellers to do the right thing, and correct it if there is an error or dissatisfaction. Of over 600 roses in my collection, virtually all of them were purchased online, and I've only complained twice, so you know it had to be bad! Tammy

trends and fashions, mariannese. At the moment, everything here is 'grow your own' with a sideshow of tropicals, prairie planting and ornamental grasses. A quick look in any bookstore will illuminate where the money is going in gardening - design is god. Not only nurseries, the horticultural trade as a whole is going through one of those reinvention moments. many colleges have downsized, teaching fewer modules in plant husbandry, nursey stock, even basic gardening, in favour of quick, money-spinning design courses. Everyone wants to be a bloody designer (We are....and we have seen some absolute cowboys who know NOTHING about plants). There are less apprenticeships. less facillities and many councils, parks and colleges no longer grow their own plants - they merely buy them in cheaply, two or three times a year, from massive greenhouses in the Netherlands. Therefore, the perceived need for knowledge and experience is receding while the nursey trade is vastly over-capitalised - almost impossible to get a small start-up going now. In the UK, the rose trade has largely been fairly steady although Beales, our foremost old rose grower, was in financial difficulties last year and have been forced to look at new ways to generate revenue (teaching courses, expanding the product range, taking on franchises selling garden structures and so on). However, I cannot help but feel quite optimistic for the longer term since roses have been around for hundreds of years while the same cannot be said about restios, bananas, echinacea and miscanthus and the rest of the fashionable plants. Moreover, in a time of anxiety and fear, people invariably fall back into nostalgia and conservative thinking....and there is nothing so redolent of english gardening as a rose. Individuals, sadly, will fall by the wayside and it may be that, for a time, we are dependent on amateurs and a few larger firms to supply us. However, these plants are out there - they are not going away and if the gardening world seriously addressed the issue of failing sales, they would be forced to engage in some imaginative thinking and address some of the many issues which troublwe people who would grow roses if they did not use so much water, pesticides and fertilisers...a matter of education and breaking down artificial barriers to full understanding. Not only that, breeders are also keen to address these troubling problems such as health and vigour, the way roses are planted within a larger scheme and the general good value of planting long-flowering shrubs - we will see a lot more ground-covering/landscape roses which, to my mind, will be a good thing as I am heartily sick of hebes and lonicera, aucuba and bloody skimmia - our usual municipal plantings. The rose industry is not dead or even slightly ill - it is just changing...and a good thing too.

mudpie, hooked and baited! Dingo, I can't speak to zone 5, but "PC" is classed as an HP, and I would count on it being pretty cold-hardy. Dark purple aging darker is certainly an appealing description... There's a member garden in 6a (KS) where someone is (or was) growing "PC". Perhaps you could contact 'Greenman' for pointers? summersrhythm, I think you already know more than most of us what zone-pushing is all about. Those are lovely roses, and I hope you can give them a warm welcome in 6a... Virginia

Rooting roses teach me what cause black canker on canes: 1) Acidic & too wet soil 2) Pockets of wetness, either a clump of wet clay, or wet sand Perlite helps to create "air pockets" and fast drainage of water so canes don't rot in rooting roses. In OUTSIDE garden, can't use perlite (it decompose & flatten out), but pine-bark-mulch in planting hole is FANTASTIC for fast-drainage, and help tremendously with winter-survival: prevents feeder-roots from being frozen & destroyed. Digging roses up from Dec. 26 to Jan 1, at 40 to 37 F, here's what I notice: Dee-lish bought end of June is green to the tip, with green leaves, the soil below is made fluffy with pine-bark mulch, drains very fast, upper soil is alkaline clay to retain moisture. Same with W.S. 2000 with green & healthy leaves this Jan: excellent drainage dug down to 3 feet. While digging up Comte (grafted-on-multiflora), I notice where I mixed sand with clay: it's frozen into solid-ice. But where I have gypsum and pine-bark mixed it .. that PREVENTED SOIL FROM BEING FROZEN. I once spent 1 hour researching on whether potassium fertilizer helps with winter-survival: some site said it helps, other studies showed it did not. With my own eyes, my verdict is "No". Where I put high-potassium cocoa mulch: it's frozen solid at 40 F, same with soil below high-potassium red-lava-rock. But high calcium, esp. gypsum helps to keep soil fluffy, thus prevent roots from being frozen solid. I used gritty lime to de-ice my front-walkway, and it worked great in the winter. There are studies that backed this. CONCLUSION: Digging deep for drainage, plus make soil fluffy with gypsum & pine-bark-mulch helps with winter survival: leaves are still green & lush as OWN-ROOTS despite previous weeks of -10 to -13 below zero. Below are green & lush leaves of Dee-lish rose, picked on December 26, in my zone 5a: