Got in the J&P catalog in today's mail.. will probably oggle this for months to come.. *sigh* too bad not all of their roses are as nice as the catalog shows, not to mention I have bad luck with J&P roses, don't know why!

Wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole, their Garden Watchdog ratings have shown the sad decline in customer service.

I received a catalog from them today, but there wasn't a single rose in it. Just "holiday gifts."

I'm sick about what happened to them. I can remember ordering from their catalog every single year for at least 15 years. The roses were superb, and the few times I had problems, customer service solved them right away and usually sent a free rose or two as an apology.

My former neighbor across the street automatically ordered every single new J&P rose every year. Her garden was a fairyland. Unfortunately, she moved and the new owner let all of the roses go to hell.

I didn't actually thumb through it.. sounds like I may be disappointed. Calif-Sue - oh, no worries, I wasn't planning on ordering from them. I ordered a Yellow Simplicity Hedge for my mother for mother's day like 3-4 years ago.. they sent the 6 roses, it was an absolute nightmare. I ordered in February. I called on Monday before Mother's day & asked for a tracking number, they said that they didn't have it in their system yet, so call back later. I called them back the next day, as the one lady I talked to said to give them 24 hours to find the number, that lady said that they had just been bought, so please give them a little time, I told them that I didn't give a flying foofoo whether they just got sold, they took my money & I want to know where these roses were.. she looked it up & said that the order was in the shipping department and they didn't answer the phone during busy times. I told them that if my mother's roses were late for Mother's day (only ordered 2 months in advance!!) I would be contacting the BBB & possibly suing them for distress, fraud, and another other frivolous thing I could think of. This was Tuesday before Mother's day. Called back on Wednesday and was told that it was mailed out USPS, I told them that I paid for UPS shipping, not USPS, the lady was like, well, it's out of my hands, so sorry, so I demanded a tracking number, she couldn't give me a tracking number because she didn't have one. WTF!! I called back about 6 hours later and got a tracking number, but it wasn't a USPS or a UPS number, so what was it? They couldn't tell me even how the damned roses had been shipped!!! This is Wednesday before Mother's day, for god's sake. I called my mom in tears.. I don't know where her Mother's day gift is.. I ordered it back in February, J&P lost it.. I don't know I don't know.. Mom assured me that it was OK, and not to worry, she knows that I got her something, don't panic (you know how moms are). Saturday afternoon she called stating that FedEx just showed up with a box from J&P and to get a refund. 4 of the 6 roses were dead sticks, 2 had a few leaves on them but were in horrific shape. I called 'em up, but they were closed, so I called back on Monday. They wanted pictures of the roses, I explained that I was in CO, my mom was in NY, I ordered these in Feb early for Mother's day so why in hell did they send her dead sticks? on & on & on. They sent 4 new roses to replace the dead ones plus a "surprise" rose..

Surprise surprise, all died. Only 2 bloomed, and they bloomed PINK!!!!!!!!!!!! Pink? I ordered Yellow Simplicity!! And they were some 5-petaled rose, too!

Never again. Doesn't mean I can't oogle purdy pictures, though.

Wow.

Thirteen years ago I ordered a dozen lavender plants from J&P. All but three died. I would learn later that it was because I planted them in heavy clay. A year after the order, J&P called trying to sell me some new (to them) David Austin roses. I mentioned in passing that my lavender were mostly dead. They sent me replacements. Can't remember if I ordered any roses from them after that, nor can I remember why/why not. My guess is that Sun Flare and Mr. Lincoln were from them and they died very quickly.

Toni, your horror story is a lot like a number of stories I've read about J&P a year or two ago. It's going to take them years to earn back the trust of people who used to buy from them regularly. It's a shame because they had just started a rather aggressive fortuniana rootstock program. And long before their precipitous fall they sold well-grown roses.

I do blame them for completely ruining the rose market in the US for, like, five decades by being the 800 lb gorilla of rose marketing and only selling about 15 cultivars in a year. Their narrow focus on roses that grew well only within, say, 200 miles of the Monterrey Peninsula did not serve rose growers in the US well. So there is a sense in which their downfall is a reasonable and warranted consequence of extreme hubris, distorted view of the marketplace, lack of foresight, and an inability to cope with changing tastes.

Steve, I always love your input. It never fails to give me things to think about. The whole notion of J&P as the 800 lb gorilla is so interesting. I never noticed it, mainly because I do live within 200 miles of the Monterey Peninsula, but I'm sure you're right. For all of those years, they sold only their own roses and a selected few others, and they were the absolute leaders in terms of sales, I'm sure.

In the years before J&P and some other huge nurseries started going downhill, Wayside Gardens was another reliable source. Their rose catalog was the highlight of every rose gardener's year. It was at least four times as thick as the J&P catalog and they offered every type of rose. At least three-fourths of my OGR's and David Austin roses came from Wayside in those years. Spring Hill was also reliable in those days, believe it or not. The selection was much more limited, but they carried roses that were unavailable from J&P or Wayside. I still have dozens of roses from Spring Hill in my garden that have been going strong for 20+ years now.

My mom's "stupid" rose (some kind of red almost climber?) came from Michigan Bulb back in'89 & is still producing tons of roses to this day. This rose prefers to bloom from October to January only, usually before the bad spring snows. It's been nibbled to the ground by deer, ran over by a propane truck, neglected for two years, and still is thriving. That is why mom was shocked when I told her that my shipment from Michigan bulb totally sucked when I ordered from them in '06. Times & companies change.

You're right, Toni. I still have some roses and clematis I bought from Michigan Bulb years ago. It never had the status of other mail-order nurseries, but its prices were always lower, so you didn't expect as much from it. All of those nurseries have changed hands since then and all of them have deteriorated as a result.

I ordered daylilies from Michigan Bulb in the mid 1990s. They weren't very expensive. But they were certainly DOA: Bags of slime weighing about 4 grams a piece. It was bad enough that I never had to write down the name of the company in order to remember never to order from them again. Maybe they were better before that.

I don't think I ever ordered bulbs from them, oddly enough, considering their name. I didn't order perennials from them either after getting a disappointing shipment of various silenes and hellebores, but I did buy vines and shrubs for several years in a row, and I still have some of the roses and clematis, as I already said, and also some weigelas, quince, and kolkwitzias.

The best bulbs I ever bought online were from the Bulbmeister. I don't know whether he's still in business, but they were truly phenomenal. These days, I just buy all of my bulbs locally.