Hoovb, you are right. No water, no roses. Everything else comes second. More water = better roses. In this dry place you have to be willing to shovel mulch. Lots of it. And with all that water and mulch, you have to be willing to prune...unless you have the gift of a very large garden and you have the plants very far apart. It's pretty easy to get fast rose satisfaction around here as long as you water and mulch and weed. No one near me grows the truly large rose plants and so weeding is required. I saw a fair number of well planted rose beds fall to weeds and then get abandoned or removed. The major cause of rose disaster here is not disease but the lack of water, improper pruning due to crews and weed takeover. Patience really helps. I was sure I got something else instead of Lion's rose. The little bitty nothing special flowers and small size bush. Then after it had some root growth for a few years, up came the robust canes and sprays of huge delicate hued blossoms fading gently to white. I just love this rose now. I was so very discouraged when it was a young plant. It's a wonderbush as a large plant. I learned to be realistic about what would do well here and let go of the ones that wanted to be in a different climate from mine. I learned to reduce the number of plants to what I could care for. A few years ago, I passed that point and I was feeling overwhelmed. I had many annual beds and too many potted fussy plants and those that needed water twice a day ( the big collection of potted azaleas, hydrangeas and blueberries with their never ending thirst) . It looked great but I was getting tired out keeping it all looking good. Now it's mostly roses and Camellias with some other things like epies and orchids and one or two azaleas and hydrangeas but not the massive diverse collection I used to have. It was getting to be too expensive to water and repot them all the time. Now that's it mainly roses, I feel like I have time to enjoy them again.

Here on the east coast there is one nursery that I would recommend visiting, Sylvan's Nursery in Westport, MA. They have hundreds of conifers and specialize in "landscape size" trees and shrubs although they have huge supplies of small affordable plants. They have several "farms" and cover a total of 350 acres or so. They are mostly wholesale but if you sign in and sign out (I guess in case you get lost) they let you roam around the greenhouses and grounds; they'll even drive you in a golf cart. I don't know why they even let me in there as I have seen professionals buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of premium stock. They do, and they are always very friendly and treat me just as well with my $60 purchase as the guy next to me shelling out thousands; of course the mark-up is higher with me (5% discount for cash though). Prices for the premium stuff is premium and the smaller stuff is higher than the box stores, but they no doubt probably have what you want, when you want it and the size you want at a fair price. Anyway, it is worth the trip (probably not from Oregon) as they are located along the Westport River and Buzzard's Bay and it is God's country. Don't go at 3 PM as the irrigation goes off (strange, they always say to water in the early AM) no matter what and you will get soaked. Not bad if its hot. I'm jealous of all the great places and choices you have in the Northwest, but thought I would give a plug for some decent people here. Here is a link that might be useful: Sylvan's nursery

Maureen: Even though I answered this question in one of your previous postings, I will - again - put in my highest recommendation for A & D Nursery, whose link I have listed below. The quality of their rootstock was mentioned in my response to that posting. As you may not know, I am a Librarian with the Michigan Dept. of Corrections. Our facility has an active horticultural program for the inmates. Since none of the garden areas had any peonies gracing the soil, I purchased 4 peonies last year in the spring - 2 each of "Sarah Bernhardt" and 2 each of "Felix Crousse" - at the local Wal-Mart. Although they were considerably cheaper, the roots of those Peony roots were much less than one-fourth of the roots that I just purchased from A & D Nursery. Despite the good efforts of the inmate gardeners - only two or perhaps one of the Peony roots has survived and even now one of the surviving roots still looks on the puny side - as only one or two sets of small leaves are showing and they are not much more than four or five inches high. I suspect that it will survive our southern Michigan winter, but I also suspect that it will take either four or five years for this plant to come into mature bloom. So if you're prone to make use of less expensive Peony rootstock, I would be absolutely certain to deeply and well prepare the soil down to a minimum of 18 inches or deeper and, at least, the same distance in diameter and greatly improve the soil structure, if needed. If you find yourself working with a clayish soil, I would also recommend working with a good soil auger to make soil preparation far easier. With this tool, once you have substantially loosened the soil, all you have to do is to remove the loose dirt. Obviously, less back breaking work. I recently purchased the Pro Gardening Auger System from the folks at the web address below, which should make good deep soil preparation for a host of bulb, plant, and rootstock material far, far easier. IMHO this system is the best soil auger around for the money, durability, and versatility. http://www.neatitems.com/Dirt_Daug.htm Hope this information is more than useful. Bill Here is a link that might be useful: A & D Nursery

One of the seed sellers' stock was bought out by a third party but the name of the company was not changed. Apparently a lot what has been for sale on that site has been quite old stock. I spent quite a bit on an ounce of Delphinium virescens, Prairie Larkspur, and the seed was old and dead. I also bought a pound of Adonis aestivalis and it was all dead. I don't think I got any results from anything I bought from that company except for Heavenly Blue morning glory, although even those seeds seemed really old. They make a big deal about using mylar packaging but some species, especially those of the Ranunculaceae family, tend to have short lifespan. Really, a responsible company will list the age of each species' seed on its website. So far, the only place I've seen do that is Sheffields. I haven't ordered from that company yet because I just don't have any money at the moment. One knock against them is that they sell some rare seeds for high prices that are so old I can't see how they'll germinate, including seeds from the 1990s. Some species will last a long time, like Moth Mullein, but some others may only last six months (aster, goldenrod). However, at least they make the important effort of disclosing the age of the seed! A Western seed site that sells mainly native seeds sold me a pound of a tall native delphinium and a pound of a shorter native delphinium. I have no plants from either, although it's possible that climate difference is to blame. Nonetheless, the germination rate on the seed for the tall species was said to be around 35%. With storage it may have dropped further. They did warn me before I paid for the order about that, though, which was good business. Seed sellers really should list the approximate lifespan of each species' seed on their website, so people will know to avoid old seed from some species. This kind of transparency will give people an incentive to shop there. Some species are hard to grow so it's not always the fault of the seed seller. But, that first company I mentioned seems to be selling very old stocks, along with perhaps some cheap easily-located annuals in bulk. The issue of old dead seed isn't just a problem in the US. A UK paper published an article where it said there were problems with corn poppy and yellow rattle seed having poor viability or being completely dead. I bought corn poppy (Shirley type) from wildseedfarms and had excellent results. So, far, I can recommend Prairie Moon, Wildseedfarms, Native American Seed (seedsource), and the Irish site Seedaholic. I'm sure there are other good seed sources but I haven't tried all that many. I have had very good results from seed purchased from those four companies although I have also had some duds. The duds were probably the result of trying to grow plants in the wrong conditions, like me trying to grow Astragalus, Dalea, Ipomopsis, and Amorpha (leadplant) in heavy moist clay loam. I had plenty of success, for example, with Ipomopsis in rocky places where water would never pool after a heavy rain. Other gravel areas where water would pool killed the plants after the first year. Any place that didn't have rocky soil... the plants barely grew, if at all. The difference between the plants thriving and not growing at all, depending on the spot/soil was tremendous. It is a fairly picky plant. The ones in front of my house where the soil is full of lava rock got very big, even though it's clay and we had a record amount of rainfall this spring. Not a single plant grew in the meadows proper, even though the soil had been freshly tilled. Too much moisture I suppose. I'm not sure I got any sprouts from the two packets of Poke milkweed (it's hard to know for sure because the seedlings look like Purple milkweed I guess and I planted that as well as Spider milkweed and Sullivant's) but pretty much every other packet I bought from Prairie Moon last winter grew, although some plants were very difficult to keep going (like Turtlehead!). Packets are a good way to figure out which species really should be purchased as small plants or plugs — or which should be sown in situ or into large pots (rather than small peat cups). For instance, I had poor results growing Liatris ligulistylis in peat cups and pots, as well as in spots in the ground I transplanted them to. However, one that I moved to a 6" plastic pot rather late in the season is now thriving. Plants are sometimes very picky. Perhaps I got the right soil mix. It could also be that I used Osmocote in the pots and not with the peat cups/pots. Maybe ligulistylis won't grow without fertilization. I also bought a pound of Adonis aestivalis from the Cactus Store and, unlike the seed from the first company I mentioned, it wasn't all dead. So, I will likely be shopping from them again. I also got some Chinese columbine from them and got some plants. There is another company that was very disappointing. It put out price lists that seemed excellent but the actual prices were much higher and the stock was very poor. I had planned to get a bunch of different species from them but all of the interesting ones turned out to not be in stock. Don't get your hopes up beforehand. Verify that companies actually have things in stock. A Prairie Moon employee, though, told me that they keep their website up-to-date with stock, so for some companies this may be less of an issue. Another site listed some rare species, like Indian paintbrush species, in actual real bulk quantities but when I called them they told me it came mixed with grasses. So, in reality, you might be getting mostly grass seed. Another site has been listing Indian Paintbrush for years but it has been Out of Stock for at least the last three years, since I've been checking. Another site uses heavily doctored (Photoshop collage) photos to sell its seed mixes! I have all of the screenshots and have been planning to post an exposé because that kind of conduct is unacceptable. It's bad enough that Ebay allows so many doctored photos without a company's actual website being full of them.