What a loaded question - people either seem to love them or hate them!

Personally, I like to think of them as shrubs that flower and for that purpose, they absolutely excel. I don't think most people buy them for enjoying the "beauty of roses"....there are many, many roses that have more beautiful individual flowers.

Here is my DKO in a pot:

{{gwi:247002}}

I love that little guy!

Good landscaping plants. If you need color somewhere they will do the trick. Not really "a rose" in my opinion, just good garden plant. I have two in my small garden, which says a lot, I usually don't do multiples of the same variety. But really they are just for eyes, not for your soul, in my opinion.
Olga

I agree, however, I put them (single KO)down a wall where the builders soil was horrible and nothing would grow....very pleasing and pretty (actually stunning from a distance). But I do agree that they are more like a flowering shrub. Plus, I like having something thats carefree, while I'm "babying" my real roses...;)

I just love your DKO Texaslynn!!! Really pretty!! I agree with Olga that KOs are not for the soul (well put). But I've never seen a picture of DKO - and I think it looks great!!!

Carol :)

thank you. I have also found older posts on KO and DKO so I would summarize what I've found, maybe someone has something to add or can find it useful:

1-they are very widespread in the US. (that's fun: I have never ever seen them in Italy Here landscaping is mostly done with oleanders, and I could find only ONE seller for DKO).

2-they tend to grow fast, big and thorny. (well, I have 60+ rugosas, I know what big & thorny means :-) DKO grow somewhat less big than KO.

3-they can be pruned like a hedge and without gentleness.

4-they bloom a lot but are not scented.

Thus I will treat them like flowering bushes, not roses. I need them to give spots of color here and there.
I have about one hundred "roses for the soul", as Olga says (I like and understand what she means). I will consider these DKO merely as ornaments with no emotional commitment.

Knock Out (KO) has a light fragrance that is more pronounced when a mass-plating is in bloom or the plant is very large. I've never been around a Double KO or Pink Double KO long enough to detect a fragrance.

I have a corner hedge of Pink Double Knock Outs and I love them as shrubs. It does not matter to me that they are not considered a true rose lovers cultivar.

They are wonderful where I have them planted, They have stayed in bounds for the last 3 years since I have planted them, and they are the best shrubs I could have planted to outline this particular Northeast and Northwest lighting, and wind exposure corner. There is a 15 foot tall, maybe 5 inch wide trunked, and 9 foot wide canopied Shumard oak tree growing only about 12 feet South of them.

They are even planted on a two foot tall berm to prevent them from suffering root rot from the neighbors water runoff that saturates that corner of our lot. In the Dry seasons this corner berm gets pretty dry, but still they did not die during our very long drought seasons a couple years ago.

No other shrub Rose cultivar, I know of, could have survived as nicely or grown to perform and look so nice, as my Pink Double KO shurbs.

Another Rose I love for growing in difficult locations is the 'Fairy' cultivar spreading rose. I planted 4 of these along the West facing edge of a 5 foot deep drainage ditch on a vacant, half acre residential lot where it took to much effort to consistantly supply needed supplimental watering. Still through the driest of years these Fairy roses have survived. They did not manage to spread and re-root at their growing tips as they grow, like they would have if kept watered properly; still each initially planted bush has remained alive, continued to establish well and even slowly fill in nicely. They even have managed to continuously bloomed each growing season long; until the first frost that often times has not arrived until late November during lots of recent years.

I personally love them. When other roses are just waking up and are pretty bare, these guys are WIDE AWAKE in the early spring. I think the foliage of KO's is underrated. It's beautiful when just appearing. I think that if someone grows a KO they should have at least one area where it can just naturalize. They can become HUGE! Mine was well over 7-8 feet last year without pruning and gave great color in the backyard all season. I don't like KO kept small. That's more like a sissy slap, not KO:). Buy them and let a few just go and you love them all the more. Anyway you spin it, it is a rose. Just because they're easy doesn't make them less a rose. Plus people have tulips, azaleas, ornamental grasses everywhere too but that doesn't prevent us from using them in the garden some how. KO's IMO are great plants...

We plant and admire azaleas, which bloom for about two weeks, and several other briefly-blooming things like Bradford pear...so as a flowering shrub, the KO family is marvelous. Long-blooming and low-maintenance. I sneered at them initially, but as a SHRUB that blooms, with choice of colors even, they're about perfect, and I take back all those mean-spirited comments! They certainly exceed FJ Grootendorst, for example!!
Laura

I absolutely adore my Double Knockout Rose! It is pretty carefree, and the best part is that, it blooms profusely from late May/early June in my zone, until the frost in October/November, even along my north-facing wall! How much more wonderful can this be? OK, it is not fragrant, but then you can't have everything, can you? :-)

Olga, I am on the bandwagon with your comment "for the eyes, and not for the soul." That is about the most perfect thing ever said about a rose, IMO. It speaks for the functionality of such as KO's and the depth of emotion evoked by a proper rose.