Memorial Day and Chicago Peace are both excellent roses. But it does matter where you get them from -- these roses are both available from low price vendors known for virused stock. You don't want bagged roses from anywhere. Make sure you buy from a reputable source (not the big box stores, etc).

Angel Face is a disease prone dog, no matter where you get it.

Kathy (who is just slightly opinionated).

I bought my first body bag rose last year as I couldn't find it elsewhere local. cl don Juan, its doing very well so far. I am kinda in a panic to buy because I figure they might not be available to buy next year because of all the bankruptcy's.

If I cant find it at our "good" nursery's & its only in a bag, I dont think I should/can pass it up. If its diseased, at least I tried.

There will be a LOT less roses to chose from next year right?

tim

Tim I grow Memorial Day and Angel Face myself and both are very good roses here in my San Diego (inland) garden.

Memorial Day has an amazing strong fragrance, the flower form is very beautiful and it is a reliable bloomer, even though the repeat is not too fast. I love its cool pink color. I won't be without this rose.

Angel Face is a very fast repeater pumping out flush after flush. It has a nice lavender color. It had some mildew at some point, but not too bad. We don't have black spot pressure here, so I can't judge about that. It is pretty obvious that this rose likes the heat and maybe also a dry climate, so I don't know if it would work out for you.

My Memorial Day is growing on its own roots and came from Heirloom Roses. It is doing very well. Angel Face is a body bag rose that I inherited from a friend. It was a little bit weak in the beginning but has nicely come around. I read that Angel Face is doing very well on fortuniana root stock.

Hope that helps.

Christina

The Halibut -- I don't think you have to worry about these three ever going out of circulation. They are old standards and are widely available.

The ones to worry about going out of circulation are the J&P patented roses. If you don't get them this year, there's no telling if they'll ever be available again. That is because the growers for J&P (including Weeks Roses) still have J&P's pre-bankruptcy stock on hand for this growing season, but after that, who knows where the intellectual property rights will go -- I haven't heard anything about anyone buying these rights up, post-bankruptcy, so they may just fade into oblivion.

Kathy

Kathy, I think someone did buy them up -- but it wasn't Weeks, and I don't know who it was.
I think, on the whole, that was bad news for the roses in question.

Jeri

I have several body bag roses still growing good today after 30 years!

I will take my chance on just one body bag rose, Chicago peace. So far all the others I want I can get at our reputable nursery. One I cant find anywhere (local) is Disneyland & I really want that one.
Thanks for the input!
Tim