Your expensive minis are beautiful. I love the creamy yellow. Our winters are a little warmer than yours, and I have never had a problem with grocery minis planted in the ground. I currently grow one that has been outside about 10 years, and is 5 feet tall and nearly as wide. Its blooms are sized maxi-mini, and it blooms continuously. I think those grocery minis are very tough and really want to bloom. I'd give planting them outside in the ground a shot (if you have the space). More expensive nursery minis are tough, too, but mine don't bloom as much as the grocery ones--probably a random thing. Diane

In the ground is always best but if you prefer them potted I would sink the pots for winter. Do NOT put that styrofoam box over them. Just mulch them up with leaves or soil. The box will cause mold and at the same time prevent needed precipitation from getting to the roots.

If you put them in the window wells use leaves or wood mulch to pack around them. Gravel will freeze and transmit the cold more easily. If the wells are under the eaves you may have to water occasionally. Roses need water all winter even when dormant.

If you put them in the garage keep them on a shelf or on blocks off the concrete floor. Water them about once a month with a 1/2 gallon of water. They are dormant, not dead, so they do need water. The fig trees would probably benefit from a drink now and then too. Mark your calendar or use a phone reminder to remember to water them. When I had roses stored in my shed I would put a shovel full of snow on each pot every time we had to shovel. But like you, we don't get as much snow as we used to so now I water all my roses during the winter. It really helps to keep them hydrated and dehydration is as big a killer as the freezing temperatures are.

Sounds like the garage is really my best bet! My back yard can get very wet in late winter, and although I have somewhat raised beds (without any edging) that many things - phlox, larger roses, lilies, bulbs bee balm etc - do well in, I would worry about the drainage in the emptier spaces, closer to the edges, where I could place the pots not being quite good enough for these.

I don't know why my other grocery store roses that I've planted in ground struggle - they are in improved soil with better drainage, but never have taken off, even after 4-5 years. I do feed them when I fertilize my nursery roses that do well.

I can enter reminders to water in my computer's calendar (why didn't I think of that!) and will do so.

Tnanks to you both, especially to seil for the thorough answer!

As long as the pots they are in have good drainage holes there should be no problem with drainage if you sink them.

Those grocery roses are barely rotted cuttings when you buy them. The growers mass produce them by the thousands and push them to bloom quickly for sale, especially for holidays. Most of them are 3 to 5 little canes stuck in a pot and greenhouse grown and forced to bloom. They are babies. It takes at least 3 years. and more like 5, for them to grow into mature plants. You have to have a lot of patience with them until they are mature. After that they should preform as well as your nursery roses. You have to remember that the nursery plants are already approximately 3 years old when you buy them. They are also probably grafted on a vigorous growing root stock that helps push faster growth. So they take off right away. The babies do not have that extra vigorous root growth to push them to grow faster so it takes them more time.

I know what you mean about the roots - and that is why I repot them into only a bit larger pots and coddle them along. But, when I have pulled up some of them (planted in ground) that finally gave up the ghost after 1-3 years failure to thrive, I have found that the roots hadn't expanded at all. Do you have any idea why that might be?