Here there is a local high school that has an entire nursery! An amazing selection for wonderful prices. Also your local agriculture extension office usually has 2 sales/yr. I do try to support some of the local nurseries, but most of what I plant comes from Bluestone Perennials, where many perennials are 3 for the price. The downside is that they are usually small plants and have to be babied awhile. Since you are also in zone 8, it's often better to order in the winter, keep the plant in a pot, and plant it late fall when keeping it watered will not be so difficult. I do that w/ a lot of mine. But, gardening is about trying different things, variety, enjoyment, and play should all come into it. Enjoy and explore... Welcome to the gardening world. Brandyray

Nursery plants are grown in shade or glass houses, given fertilizer with every watering, given filtered water, provided precise temperatures for optimal fast growth. Then suddenly they are sitting on hot asphalt at a big box store, get snapped up by a customer, and taken home to less-than-protected, less-than-perfect conditions. And they are shocked, the foliage starts looking bad, and the rose stops blooming. It may be nothing you did, and may not be your soils fault at all. Give them a recovery time. They must adjust to different water, extremes of temperature, new soil, insects, disease pressure. They must grow a root system in the soil, which takes a plant considerable effort. The more perfect conditions they were produced in, the more of a shock normal garden conditions are going to be. Plants used to be grown in the open and experienced conditions similar to the conditions they would get when taken home and planted. But then the plants would not look "perfect" and flawless. They might be a little chewed, and have a yellow leaf or two. Nowadays, plant production is so fine-tuned and so much is known about how to "pump up" plants to look absolutely gorgeous for a few days so people will buy them. But they don't get those ideal conditions even from very experienced gardeners when they are planted out in the real world. So what happens is what you are seeing. The roses can bounce back and look good again with good care and patience.

To edlincoln: Sorry, this is not about maples. I have been following your postings and plight about landscaping in the Cape and Island area of the east coast. Here I have a bit of experience. It is not easy. It should be noted that the whalers returned to their New England homes with all types of foreign plants with the hope they would survive the rigors of salt air and wind. This type of landscaping and plant selection requires trial and error, locating the 'quiet spots' on a property during a raging nor'easter where healthy plant growth can be encouraged and planting young, low stock that can grow and adjust to the wind. The later is very important. There are lots of tricks to baffle the wind. And some excellent gardening books dealing with your area situation. Now that I am way off topic, an additional bit of learning for those owning seaside properties where almost nothing will grow despite following all the "rules". That area is covered with sections of unmarked Indian burial sites. It has been my experience, and of others, that very few introduced plants will grow in and around such sites. It occurs to me that this may be your problem and a bit of historical research might be helpful.

Update on the 4 pots full I bought and replanted in early June. Every pot but 1 had 4 plants in it, and 1 plant died a few weeks ago, but all the rest have put on growth and have buds that will open in a while (small, not yet ready). I had 15 plants total, I now have 14, and they all have 2-3" growth on them, and about half have buds coming up. Several also have a bit of mildew, but that's probably directly related to my being too lazy to get up and water early in the day... All the nasty yellow leaves are gone and new leaves have replaced them - I started watering less frequently, and that seemed to do the trick. The colors of the blooms do appear to have changed, and I don't know if that's a weather issue, or a sun/shade issue, or what the deal is. The mauvy-pink one has been creamy with pink where the sun hits it. The peachy apricot was a pale creamy yellow. Red hasn't bloomed yet since I repotted it, and it was one of the worst yellowed, so we'll see how it does when the blooms open up. White hasn't bloomed since repotting either, but it too has buds. This is fun....