Thank you very much everyone :) Also, I don't know if this made any difference yet but might have in the future on the size of the blooms, but I planted my roses in pots with air pruning method (netted pot inside the bigger pot container) so that the roots get really nice. The reason I plant in containers/pots is because many roses that I MUST HAVE are just not hardy here in the winter, and I don't want to compromize, so I'll rather just have them in pots and take them inside in the winter :) My patio looks really great with all these nice roses in pots in a row. Sutekesh: Wow, so nice of you!! I live near the swedish border and have my family in sweden, so shipping to sweden is OK. Norway has extreme regulations normally. :D I'll check those sites out!

How lovely to do this for your aunt! You're wise to be strategic about how much work the rose would be and how much bloom there is for the effort. Tomatoes produce a very tangible and profuse benefit for the efforts involved, but sometimes there is a slow return on a rose. Of the three you mention being locally available, by far JFK is the hardiest for me. Neither Honor nor Full Sail has even pretended to overwinter for me in zone 5, thought Seil has had luck with them in zone 6. Sometimes roses that are at their limit of hardiness for your zones may be the ones that fade after a few years. I also don't find that PJPII is a strongly growing rose in any form (grafted or own root). Bolero and Paloma Blanca and Polar Express are all much more reliable bloomers as well as hardy roses for me, and I like the idea of Polar Express. Another rose that you might be able to find at a local store is Snowdrift, which is an Easy Elegance rose. This one is hardy in my zone 4 pocket of the yard and has now in its second year BURST into incredible bloom. I've seen very nice rebloom in other years so I think it would make a steady source of flowers for her, but it's not the best of cutting roses. However, the blooms are fully double and they start out looking cupped as the Austins do. It's also rock solid clean as far as blackspot goes, which is a huge issue for you in NJ. Mine is about 4' tall and wide, which may not fit in her space. Polar Express takes up less real estate and would be as resistant to disease I think for you. Roses Unlimited sells most if not all of these and their gallon-sized roses often come with blooms already on them, but they do take some settling in as opposed to big nursery pots of roses. Do let us know what you decide! Cynthia

@gardengal48 I have lots of plants that are very healthy in clay soil. I understand that plants adapt and are hardy, and they were doing fine before we created containers and container soils. :) Let us talk about why a true container soil - that contains properly engineered ingredients that drain well - should not be mixed with compost. One reason is that the compost will not drain well, thus removing most of the drainage characteristics you took the time to engineer the soil for. But I think it is more than this alone. I have been doing experiments where plants grow very well in pure sand. Most container soil purists think that is dangerous because there is too much capillary action in the soil (and related issues like cohesion of water and adhesion). But actually it looks like plant roots in pure sand can stand in water without a lot of damage, for at least half a day. And consider hydroponic gardening, where roots are grown in pure water. Water actually has a lot of oxygen in it. Roots do okay in uncontaminated water. But try to grow anything but fungus in a soil that is mostly compost and manure, and overwater the soil. The plant rots and dies. That horrible material that most nursery plants come in soaks up water in compost soil and never releases and plants quickly start to die off with overwatering. The reason for this is the organisms in compost and manure soils use up all the oxygen in the water. The water-bound soil prevents the replacement of oxygen by airflow. So you get a double whammy that air cannot get into the soil and organisms take oxygen out of the water. The roots rot. But a pure sand soil drowns the roots for a short time in oxygen-rich water, and the plants can tolerate that as the soil drains. So that is what I mean by not contaminating an engineered soil with compost. An engineered soil that has some small particles in it is generally going to be well tolerated. Adding compost or manure to such a wet engineered soil is going to kill the plant (if overwatered). I am not arguing in favor of creating engineered soils with sand. I am not saying that such soils are optimal for most plants. I am making an extreme point that you can create an engineered container soil that holds a little too much water and many plants can still do okay in them. But contaminate that with compost and manure, and almost no plants can do okay in them if overwatered. In any case, if you are going to go with more organic soil for a raised bed, I understand your point about no more than 10% organic matter. Compare that to the advice of nearly every article online written about "container soil" for roses that advises 1/3rd of the soil be manure, 1/3rd of the soil be compost, etc.

oh! Markay MD and Moses I have never seen popcorn drift. I am going to look into that one some more. Markay MD Is your photo Lions Rose? I do have that one and I'm really happy with it. Does well in shade and leaves are healthy. It's in a pot with and not on the drip system and seems to be doing superb. Whereas I have Tranquility and Desdemona in pots as well and on the drip and they are doing just fine but that Lion is healthy. I was hoping for something a touch more in color like Claire or more white but I will consider that maybe even transplant the one in the pot and then I only need to buy one more. The two bushes will sit inside a boxwood hedge shape.