I think I know what you mean. Perhaps the advantages Vintage Gardens roses are purely hypothetical. If a rose you cannot get anywhere else fails after you buy it from Vintage Gardens, your rose collection is really not any further along than if you had not bought it from there in the first place. It's a point I'll get some consolation from as VG closes.
I keep buying Crovoisier and it keeps dying. Same with French Lace (3x), and a too many other HT's and Floribundas to count.
My bands from RVR - if I set them out after the last hard frost - tend to outperform bands from Vintage gardens. For example, from RVR this spring is an Emily Gray that froze to the ground in April, then barely endured four months without rain. Although it is now 1/2 inch high it is looking great. I continue to have high hopes for it. Also diminutive is a Yolande d'Aragon that I planted in unimproved caliche and kept forgetting to water this summer. It's six inches tall, but it looks better right now than two year old Geisha from Vintage.
