@ alameda: I have Double Delight, Fragrant Cloud, Mister Lincoln, and Dolly Parton. Even though I love them all, Fragrant Cloud is totally my favorite. If you are trying to have a fragrance garden, you must have this rose. The blooms were the size of oranges and lasted a solid 7-10 days. You'll love it. @ seil: what a bummer! My FC did fine this summer and we had a record breaking, "catastrophic" summer. Maybe it's the humidity from the lake? @ roseseek: Great suggestion putting Fragrant Cloud and Miss All American Beauty next to each other. That's what I did in my garden and I have to say the colors are great next to each other-- a fireworks display of roses. When the breeze is just right-- it's just heavenly.. Makes all of the extra tending worth it.

The oldest cane is just in transition to the normal mature state of gray-barkiness. The younger cane on the left in the bottom photo has canker lesions and should, IMO, be pruned out. The lower foliage shows signs of waterlogging. Organic mixes used for potting will break down into fine muck over three years and hold too much water. The bottom 3" of soil may be permanently saturated. I don't see any reason to discard the plant or to prefer own-root over grafted (equally good gardeners have various preferences). It just needs repotting in a mix containing lots of bark, perlite, or porous ceramic.

Your best bet for finding a Gypsy for sure would be Vintage Gardens. They KNOW the roses, and, while not impossible, receiving a mis named plant from them would be less likely than other hit and miss efforts. Currently, it's only custom root, which is expensive, but you have to determine what it's worth to you to obtain the right one. Until five years ago, I dealt with contract growers here in Southern California. They have lists of the roses they bud...supposedly. In cases of very distinct roses with none that resemble them greatly, they have the right rose. I've not received anything other than Peace labeled as Peace. Camelot and Gypsy both came as Fragrant Cloud. Cherry Parfait, when still pretty new, came as Double Delight. Paradise came as anything mauve. The climber Golden Glow came as the HT Gold Glow and vice versa. Just about anything orange to pink came as Tropicana. Anything red, fragrant or not, came as Oklahoma and Mr. Lincoln. Oregold was anything yellow, regardless of how yellow. There were many others which resembled the named rose, but which definitely weren't. These companies remain in business because of price and quantity. They serve the big box segment of the market because they can provide cheap, named, budded roses in huge quantities. Because they limit their production to a smaller list of varieties, they produce masses at very low prices. They permit a business to order in several different ways, each one determining how much the individual roses cost. If you want to cherry pick and specify the names you wish and want grade 1 plants, they would cost you as much as $2.75 each wholesale cost. This is before they are potted and grown into bud and bloom plants. You could allow them to choose what they needed to get rid of, specifying type (HT, floribunda, shrub or climber), how many of each and which grades you would accept. You could order simply by color, when you would definitely get more mis named plants because of foul-ups in the fields, or just order a quantity and leave everything else up to them. By not being picky about what you received, and ordering by the thousands, you could drop your wholesale cost to as low as about .85 a plant. You have to at least triple the cost for a bud and bloom plant, so picking the varieties and grade would result in at least a $9 blooming canned plant. Letting them dump whatever they had too much of and needed to get rid of could provide you with around a $3 canned, blooming plant. Of course, there were no guarantees of them being properly named and no freedom from viral infection. They weren't guaranteed to live, but were guaranteed to be alive when received. If planted properly and cared for appropriately, they usually lived and flowered, whether they were correctly identified or not. This is likely what you're seeing in the "home improvement" stores as there are many growers who avail themselves of such contract growers as they can pump out the product much less expensively than anyone can produce their own. If you want a plant less likely to be virus infected; more likely to be true to name; in higher percentages of higher grades; held in proper conditions to keep them fresher until shipping and with a guaranty to be true to name and live longer, you bought from J&P, Week's, Star-Meilland, etc., but the wholesale costs of their plants were double to quadruple that of the contract growers, depending upon how many of each variety you ordered and whether they were true bare roots, body bagged or potted. This was also the only way to get the new, patented roses everyone came in looking for. While you can luck out and find a decent plant of a rose true to name in the contract grower category, your chances are much lower than if you bought from the major producers. And, if you wanted anything newer, you had to buy from the majors as newer is always more highly controlled and more expensive unless someone had excess and dumped them wholesale to reduce their inventory while the demand was still high. It hasn't been uncommon to find new, patented varieties mis labeled as something non patent and sold cheaply to reduce stock and avoid royalty payments. Of course, in recent years, the world has changed because of the collapse of so many markets and producers, but that only means it's worse now than before. I realize much of the fun is finding the "bargain" plant of what you want, but the odds are getting worse against your getting a decent plant of the actual rose you want in those selections. Last spring, at my local Lowe's, I encountered tables full of variously colored roses all labeled Oregold. You could buy a red Oregold, a pink Oregold, etc. Imagine trying to straighten that one out years from now. Kim

It can produce a lot of blooms. I had on cane with 5 huge buds on it. The center one was so huge, and now I'm waiting for the other 4 to open. It's not a true shrub rose, but it can have many blooms at once. I tend to keep my HTs a bit bushy so they put out more blooms of a smaller size. Here is mine earlier this spring