I ordered from all over the place; Southern US, West Coast, and Canada. I received active bands, active minis, and bareroot. All were pretty time consuming to unpack, but the extra packing care seemed to have kept all the roses in very good shape.

Interestingly, the messiest and most tangled packing job were the 7 bareroots in one box, all wrapped in one plastic bag, and they are also the largest, healthiest, bloom-makin'-est monsters in the garden right now. Guess the inconvenience to me wasn't so much a trauma for the roses.

I could be way off base, but I have a suspicion that streamlining the packing process isn't a top priority for the nurseries. I'd imagine that they go the extra mile to make sure that roses arrive in good condition because there's nothing worse than having a reputation for shipping dead product. I think the trade off is extra time and $$ to make sure they don't rack up warranty/guarantee expenses.

Wow -- I wouldn't have ever even thought of this topic. Unpacking roses is pure joy -- like xmas morning -- for me.

To me it is FAR more important that the roses are safe and secure in transit -- and that they don't move around in the box -- than whether it takes me a long or short amount of time/trouble to unpack them.

I'm happy when I receive the roses in good condition, and I don't really care how long they take to unpack.
Kathy

Ditto - thank goodness for people who take care in packing and make doubly certain those bumps and jolts along the way don't damage the roses. Detailed care in packing represents a seller who isn't just interested in making the sale - they're interested in keeping the customer.

Ditto what kstrong wrote. All I care about is how well they survived the trip to Michigan.

When considering shipping, I have to go by price, unfortunately.

I've actually never had a problem with any method I've seen from rose vendors. Well, except for too-dry bareroots from a couple of places who just did the bag thing (unclosed) and it didn't work out. Yep, they got to send me new ones, too ;) That has to eat into their expenses!

The worst damage we ever had was to bare roots, ordered decades ago, from well-known Canadian nurseries. Probably not the ideal source, if you're in Southern California? :-)

Some arrived after multiple weeks in transit, apparently frozen and defrosted multiple times en-route, and covered with black slime.
Others arrived tied so tightly that the canes snapped off at the bud union. One had NO remaining canes.

All of which wouldn't have been so bad, had the nurseries been willing to replace the totalled plants -- but they weren't.

We've NEVER had an own-root plant arrive in that sort of shape, and over time, we've ordered from many sources. The firmer the packaging for those, the happier I am.

Jeri

I wonder if there is a significant difference in shipping costs between ARE and the one who used other methods to secure the packaging. Those inserts have to cost more...

For own-root plants, I have received them potted and secured in the boxes, potted with the pots covered with plastic bags, wrapped in newspaper, and stuffed into Express Mail boxes (minis), and also with no pots, but bags around the soil and roots. As long as the soil is secured, and none has spilled out of the pots, I'm happy. I have never received a bareroot with soil, they are always "bare" roots, sometimes just in plastic bags, sometimes with peat moss or newspaper covering the roots to keep them moist.