I've found Weeks, Star, and JP roses at all the big box stores at discount prices. It has more to do with timing than anything else. The easy answer to your original question is that big box stores place market caps on all the items that they sell. All too often this means that they won't sell something unless it is cheap enough to buy from a wholesaler where the big box stores can make a 25-100% markup and still fall within the economical tastes of their customer demographic. They will also often under price similar items with little to no markup if there is competition down the road. There philosophy is that they can hold their marketing breath longer than the small operation down the street until it breaks the mom and pop shops. This is an aggressive tactic which has made companies owned by the likes of the Waltons (Wal-Mart) so successful. Once the competition has been run out of business they change their market line-up in order to rationalize the newer higher prices. We consumers are at the heart of the problem when we only want to pay $5 for a rose that cost significantly more to grow, graft, fertilize, water, spray, yank out of the ground, hose down and trim, tag, deliver, and pot up at a local nursery. From experience I can tell you that most roses sell, at wholesale price (bare root), around 4-9 dollars depending on how new or rare the variety is (demand) and popularity (supply). All growers will sell weaker plants in a grab-bag style at a lower price ($2-$3) with no tags. These are the roses that most big box stores sell to the public as "Promo" rose bushes. The mark-up is low, but it gets customers in to buy complement items that sell at much higher mark-ups (such as potting soil, sprays, fertilizer, etc.). Now, I'm all for defending and supporting the local mom and pop shops, but let's take a look at what they do...There are two m&p nurseries by my house that I frequent. One will sell me a Nelson's Florida rose bush at $25-$30 dollars while the other sells it to me me for $16. Both have employees and owners that don't have much more of a clue on how to keep a rose healthy (or what a healthy rose looks like, for all that matter) and both basically sell the same product. I know that the rose wholesales for around $10 and must be ordered in sets of five with a minimum total order purchase of around 100 rose bushes. In this case I will go out of my way and first see what the m&p nursery, that sells roses for $16 (a whole $6 mark-up), is selling before I ever spend any of my money at the m&p nursery that is selling the same roses for $25-$30 (a $15-$20 markup (that's more than 100%!)). The m&p nursery pays their employees the same salary, maybe even less, as the big box stores. They also are selling you on a false idea that what they sell is any better than what you can find at big box stores (of course you have to know for yourself what you are buying and weigh its value for the $ for yourself based on your experiences). So why support a business that keeps quality roses out of some people's economical reach? I apologize for this disertation-esque posting, but the us-agianst-them mentality gets old, especially when no one is to blame more than we consumers that demand everything to be much cheaper than its equal value in other countries, but, alas, that only leads to another discussion that I'll hold for someone elses thread, when it becomes available. Adrian.

I have been seeing the Kordes Clean n Easy roses at a couple of places near me. Did not see them at Lowe's here when I checked. But I did find them at a couple of garden centres & Canadian tire. I picked up cherry lady (aka fiji), Rosanna & Poseidon. They also had a number of others - about 10 varieties I've seen. The only one I haven't seen is brothers Grimm. That's one of the ones on my wish list. But it's nice to see them available in Ontario. I prefer to buy larger potted plants than bare roots if I can.

It could be either of those, thanks!!! leaning more toward lavender Pinocchio becaus it has a yellow line in the leaves but I don't think this is a florabunda, it's not flowering in clusters

In SE VIrginia, Home Depot contracts with a local nursery to produce most 0f the plant material, arrange the displays and provide all the care. Plants that are not up to par are pulled by nursery employees and put back on the truck. The nursery employees are fairly knowledgeable but when they're not there, good luck getting answers to plant questions. Since the nursery eats the losses they are motivated to take good care of the plants and locally, they do a very good job keeping up with the watering. Lowe's, on the other hand, has a plant specialist in the department assisted by others who have some on-line training. The Plant Specialist does the ordering and makes markdown decisions. Our Lowe's has several employees who are knowledgeable and their training is geared towards assisting customers. During peak season they are assisted by vendors who unload and arrange the plants. In our local store, the nursery has a subsidiary who provides these merchandisers, called Plant Partners. Lowe's expects the merchandisers to focus on tasking and let Lowe's employees handle the customers. The weak point in this arrangement was that the watering was supposed to be handled by part-time, untrained employees. (One told me she refused to water the Kordes roses because they were so thorny and she wasn't provided any gloves!) I've worked at both stores.