you should water planting areas not individual plants. Set up a grid based on your spread pattern.

Thanks Nil13, it seems the only practical way to accomplish that is by running emitter tubing everywhere along the planting beds. I wish I had done that when I originally converted everything to drip irrigation instead of using quart inch line with individual emitters.

If I was stuck with 1/4" tube, I'd throw all the drippers away and get microsprays.

Any decent manufacturers of micro-sprays to recommend? The DIG brand at HD gives pretty inconsistent performance, with uneven arcs of water (strong spray on the outside edges).

Checkout Netafim techline EZ, with built in emitters, the tubing is 12mm in diameter (smaller than the 17mm-1/2", but larger than 1/4" so you can run lengths like 250-300 feet from your main line) pressure compensating, self cleaning etc.

The narrowness makes it easier to hide and so flexible you can run a loop back for 18" line spacing without adding any connectors.

All you need to create a circuit is a single slip connector for the 12MM tubing (which has 1/2inch threads on the other side - use than to connect to your main line); and a single end stop connector.

Netafim is great and it's definitely the way to do drip irrigation.

I use commercial sprays from Ewing Irrigation. I'll have to look to see if they are branded.

Most of the ones I use are Landscape Products brand. They have adjustable microsprays which are really convenient for getting head to head coverage. They also have some with throws of 12 feet. If you don't want to risk sprays with the roses and your bed is flat you can go with adjustable micro bubblers that can emit up to 30 gph for spread.

Spray emitters don't typically have 'even' spray from a single head. They work in concert with one another to provide even watering with head to head coverage. So your observations about flow are pretty typical.