I have the hardest time keeping roses alive in the garden. The grocery store mini roses bloom so good in pots on the patio for the summer. After a few years they get to big and I plant them in the garden and they survive.

I have had good luck with grocery mini roses too. They are a great value with 4-5 roses for $1.99 on sale.

The original mini roses have hardy ancestors - rugosa roses. Some colors, like the lavender and peach, haven't done well for me. You don't know the cultivar, so you can't look it up to check the hardiness. Perhaps they are less hardy. My favorite is the red and white striped mini rose.

I typically put them in the ground in heavily amended soil right away.

That is funny I have never been able to keep the red or the red and white stripe alive through the winter. The peach and yellows are the most hardy for me. The white one died before summer was over. Black spot just took it over.

I have tried planting them in the garden with good soil but they do not survive unless I grow them in the pots for 2 - 3 yrs. By then they are usually 4' and the stems are really thick.

Andi ...

The lineage of miniature roses sold in grocery stores is far beyond the rugosas. Many of them were specifically bread by European breeders as "throw-away" roses and sold for table top decoration and never intendend for the garden. The primary breeder was Poulsen, which distributed their roses through Aldershot in the United States. Meilland and Kordes minature roses were distributed through the florist industry.

Greenheart Farms is now wholesaling miniature roses bred by Ralph Moore, Dee Bennet, Frank Saville. Wendy White, Frank Benardella and more to grocery stores and big box stores. Oh, and they are selling the Kordes roses, too. They are even changing the names of the roses.

If you find a rose named 'True Pearl' it is really 'Cinderella' bred by deVink and released in 1953. Your red and white stripe is probably one of Ralph Moore's roses.

Isn't this fun ?

I wonder if the roses I have been purchasing are ones that are sold to the Florist shop. My grocery has a FTD Florist shop attached and they put out 3 to 4 pots of roses and a few houseplants but not a lot on a table outside the shop. Most of their business seems to be cut flower and baskets.

Cinta ... the answer to that question is "Sometimes ?" I guess it depends on where they get their roses. I know that our one and only grocery store up here gets their miniature rose plants for their florist department through a company that supplies florist and they are supplied by Greenheart Farms. So, I don't have an answer for othe parts of the country.

Otherwise, we don't have a florist in town ...

I am going to ask this weekend. The leaves on their plants are bigger than the ones on the other grocery store that I shop that does not have a florist shop. I never buy their roses because they always want 8.00 2" for the little pot and 12.99 for the 4" pot. The florist store are 5.00 for 8" pot.

You usually do not know the color because they are not blooming when they put them on the table.

I understand, Cinta. I just wrote my post to let you know that most of these roses are not the throw away roses that most people thought. Take them out of their little containers, grow roots and many of them are really quite garden worthy.

I know they are not a house plant. That is why people are always asking why they are dying. I picked one up in the winter and tried to keep it alive in the house and it just does not work. Silly me since I was growing so good outside I thought I could keep it for a few months Boy was I WRONG.

They do make pretty table decorations ... for a while ...

Yep and they make ugly table decoration when they start dropping yellow leaves everywhere. I get antsy during the winter and do retail therapy. I ran out and picked up the little rose bush and the orchid and planted them in a basket. Good thing the Orchid flowers last until Spring or I would have really got depressed.

Drainage ... Most of the time they don't last indoors is because they don't get sufficient light and the humidity is wrong, but the arrangement above indicates poor drainage ... it's always something.

If I separate them and pot them in a bigger pot right away, they will last indoors or on the patio for a while.

My white one got blackspot and died also, but my neighbor's is alive. I wanted red, strip[ed and white growing together, but the white didn't cooperate.

They say "mini rose" on the label - the same label for all of them. Greenheart farms supplies some of the other plants. They probably supply the roses also. I separate them and plant them in amended soil in the garden. By the time I dig a hole and remove the rocks, I have to amend the soil to have enough to plant. The ones that survive do great. I ran out of peat moss to cover them this year, so I covered them with leaves - mostly oak leaves.

They are so cute!