Almost exclusively online. I did get one very nice white rose at Home Depot. It blooms non-stop.

Always on line, unless we pay a visit to one of our wonderful vendors.

We've always bought something at the Celebration of Old Roses, or on a visit to Vintage Gardens -- whether we "need" anything or not. And of course we brought roses home from the Antique Rose Emporium, last month.

Selections in local nurseries (and I am a great defender of local nurseries) become less imaginative with every passing year.

Jeri

Online totally, although we may make a road trip to pick up the orders. (With the inc. cost of gas, first we do the math.)
Local resources for modern HTs and Fls are slim; RMV ridden HTs from certified roses dominate the local sellers. And there is NO local source for roses on multiflora rootstock which thrives in my garden (as do most ownroots). I've got a wait and see attitude for J&P's own roots that are somewhere on the pipeline. (I'll wait until someone else buys them and grows them in east TN and I see good results after three years.)

The majority of them locally, but that's about to change soon as Sequoia Nursery is closing. I will really miss being able to go and select out my own roses.

I order mine online and then pick them up, Shipping on over 200 rooted cuttings would be too much. Most others I get are cuttings that I root myself or trade for. Very seldom I will pick up a packaged or potted rose. It's got to be something I really yearn for.
My secret to avoiding impluse buying is to stay away from the garden areas of the stores I visit and not stop at free standing nurseries or garden centers. After all these years, I've learned to control my obsession.
When the impulse gets too much to control I just stand in front of a mirror and say to myself, "My name is Karl Bapst and I'm a rosaholic."

For good quality OGRs, it has to be online for me. In this part of the country (Ohio, specifically SW Ohio), there are no good local nurseries...not like the Carolinas/Texas/California. It's all Knock Out and Flower Carpet (I'm not a total hater, I have both).

I've gotten some decent J&P own root Austins and grafted HTs from Lowes.

Eric

I couldn't resist buying Abraham Darby locally; it was love at first sight. I also bought Route 66 (out of pity, it was in terrible shape), Janet, Teasing Georgia, OLOG, Burgundy Iceberg, Ebb Tide and Julia Child. All are doing well. My other approximately 48 roses (all antique roses) were bought at various on-line nurseries. Except for Basye's Purple these little roses seem to be flourishing. I've been fortunate to have had good experiences with all the on-line nurseries I've dealt with, and very much respect their hard work and knowledge.

Ingrid

I order only online. In the last 6 or 7 years I bought only two Elle locally because I needed them fast to fill in 2 empty spots before a garden tour.

J&P are NOT among my favorite vendors but their New Generation (ownrot) - with the exception of Black Magic that hates my yard or soil; in addition I ordered Black Magic grafted - big mistake!)- roses were healthy with huge root system and do fabulously. In addition, ordering roses online cost me less (even with the shipping coast) than to buy JPs locally, not to mention the quality difference. Most of the J&Ps sold locally are grafted and in much worse shape than the plants I received from 'the sourceÂ.

Even if you disregard RMV or mislabeling, chopped roots the remaining issue is important for me. Every local nursery (chain store or so-called independent nurseries) has a very limited selection of varieties: every year they offer the same 20 or 30, maybe 40 roses year after year.

I prefer online ordering because I have a good chance to find the plant "I can't live without" in some of the online nurseries. Furthermore, if I want grafted plants there is no local nursery carry those plants on a rootstock that woks in my soil (multiflora).

Online. This past year I swore off every buying a rose from a local nursery. The selection is poor. No one does any real research on the roses they stock as to whether they do well in our climate--I think they get all their info from their vendor, who tells them what will sell. This is true for all the local nurseries I've visited within 50 miles from here. Of course the big box stores are even worse, a sea of HTs in Maine.

On the few occasions I've purchased container roses from a nursery, they seem to grow much more slowly than the bareroots I plant the same year. I really think they are potting a #1 1/2 or #2 rose in the pots. Although they looked good, healthy, and well-developed when I bought them, I still have container roses that have been in the gaeden for 3+ years that are still "runts".

On-line from ARE & Chamblees.
And sometimes from local vendors, IF they use those two vendors as their supplier.

Randy

I buy on-line. In fact, I am about to send in my Heirloom order. I must delete at least five from my list of 11! This is so hard, but room is at a premium. Planted a big order from Palatine this fall. First time for fall planting. Hoping for good results. I have had better luck on-line than the boring, poorly cared for roses in our local nurseries. Lesley

Mostly locally because there is a great nursery in Phoenix called Baker Nursery. They will order what you want from the three suppliers they use and routinely carry thousands of roses.
The roses not available from their three suppliers are the ones that I order online.

Redsox:

You ask a good question. Like most of my fellow forumites apparently I buy mine online. However there are exceptions. This last summer I bought myself 'What a Peach' from our local nursery almost exclusively because it was on sale and just so pretty. A friend bought me 'Angel Face' from the same nursery and it was gorgeous this summer. This spring I will be making two rose purchasing outings. One to the Sacramento City Cemetery to see what I can get my paws on and to Heirloom Roses up in Portland, OR. I have family up there so going to Heirloom just makes it even more fun.

In general our one local nursery has a pretty limited selection. However last year we discovered a nursery about an hour away that had row, after row, after row of roses. My husband finally just parked the car at the end of the rows and waited for me there as I had to look at almost everyone:) So we will probably be back there next summer for Black Baccara if they have it again.

Otherwise virtually all my roses will be coming from Roses Unlimited plus I hope to get some babies from Sequoia Nursery before they close.

Happy New Year!

Kate

Red I forgot to tell you. My Mom and I were looking at roses online this weekend over the holiday. She told me she thinks 'designer' roses are just fancy and overpriced. She buys hers (except the ones provided by me) at K-mart. The crazy part is her roses look great. I have yet to make sense of how my mom can make such cheap roses shine without doing anything but applying Miracle Gro for Roses once or twice during the summer.

Kate

I buy mostly online but will buy locally if the plant is exceptional. I usually like own-root roses so I get mine online.

Both. I plan all my roses and order them online. Then I'll buy some at the local nurseries to fill in gaps from roses that didn't ship or died for whatever reason. I love to look at the roses growing in the local nurseries where I can see what they really look like and what they smell like. But the local places can't compare to the selection online so I do order most of my roses.

I guess I plan to look for HTs and Floribundas locally first and if I can't find what I want, buy them online. For OGRs I will look online.

Tiny Petals is the only place we have ordered roses from online. Deb and I want to inspect roses before we buy them. Sue OBrien almost broke my arm getting me to order from Tiny Petals.

Kate, your Mom is probably one of 'those people' that can get a popsicle stick to take root.... like Deb is :) I thought all we needed to do was give them MG a few times each year??? LOL

I order mostly on line. The nearest large nursery is 35 miles away and you are never sure they will have what you want. I buy a few from Walmart; but they are such poor quality.

Digger:

If all you have to do your amazing roses is remember to Miracle Gro them once or twice a season I am going to rip out everything in my yard and plant California Poppies. Just give up completely. The two of your roses are just a source of wonder for me.

My parents climate is not terribly different from yours. They are in Walla Walla, WA. They are a bit warmer but dry like Montana during the growing season. I just have to laugh at how little my Mom does to make her cheap roses look great.

Kate

I buy mostly online. The local nurseries carry only the usual, well-known, or whatever J&P and Weeks carries. I'd like to support the local nurseries, but their prices have gone up so much, that it's actually often cheaper to buy online even with shipping charges. And buying their potted roses, you get the fertilizers that they use to promote the growth and blooms. The most popular nursery here feeds their roses with sulfate of ammonia, and the roses are big and beautiful, but they almost always die once I get them repotted or planted in the ground. And the other local nursery doesn't take very good care of the roses, and pots them up in those 2gal peat pots, and they end up looking like crap by mid-season and full of disease.

Ordering roses online you get better selection, and can often find the unusual and hard-to-get varieties that local nurseries just can't get. I order from many sources. Heirloom, Hortico, Regans, Edmunds, Rosemania, Roses Unlimited, Vintage Gardens, Sequoia Nursery, Rogue Valley Roses, Pickering, Wisconsin Roses, Almost Heaven Roses, Ashdown, Chamblees, Palatine, Jackson & Perkins, Northland Rosarium, Nor'East, Bridges, Moore's Roses....

I also do buy from the local "big box" stores when they get the packaged bareroots in winter and the potted roses in spring. They often have some interesting roses. And I find it sort of fun even with the cheapie bareroots that sometimes are mismarked. But, I am getting to where this may be the last big hoorah for ordering or buying roses for me. I am definitely out of room!!!

I might order 25% of my roses on line. Everything else comes from Cool Roses, 50 miles away. If I want a rose they don't carry, all I have to do is get some budwood and take it down to them and they will custom bud a plant for me. Don't forget, good budwood + good rootstock = Great rose bush. I'm VERY picky about what goes into my garden.

I order my roses exclusively from online sources, such as RU, ARE, Pickering and Hortico. I have about 100 roses and about 90 of them are from online. The other 10 I got locally when I first started growing roses. Now if I lived near Roses Unlimited that would be a different story:-)

Both. I am fortunate that I am almost part of the family at my favorite nursery-get EXCELLENT deals from them at the end of the season on their roses. Also I am a bargain hunter at the big box stores on their clearance roses.

Continuing the bargain theme, I have taken advantage of sales at Merry Gro and David Austin.

In this day and age I can't afford to let rose snobbery overtake my pocket book.

Kate, we spend a lot of time in the yard (2 hours per weekday each and more on weekends). Most of that is weeding, pest squishing, washing foliage and chatting... acting like we are working. The roses get Miraclegro every 3 to 4 weeks. We give them some epsom salt in spring. Some of the older roses get a dose of iron in spring too. Memom and Mom told me 40+ years ago that roses were easy to grow and I believed them :) We are firm believers in the old saying that the best thing for roses is the shadow of the gardener. Deb's shadow is magical :)

Wanting to get the exact rose variety you desire, especially one that was hybridized 100 years or more ago, and getting it without rose mosaic virus is not "rose snobbery".

Randy

I live close to Ashdown and Roses Unlimited which makes road trips very dangerous!
I always order online. The big box stores don't carry anything good here.

Carla

I try to buy locally whenever I can. Like someone else noted,
many nurseries can order plants for you even if they do not
have them in stock. I consider it a blessing to have a lot of
fine nurseries nearby to browse and get ideas. I think mail
order has its place as well for rare and hard-to-find items,
but anything that is available locally I buy locally.