Hi Connie, Glad to know theres others out there with the same mind frame. Have fun ordering your other three babies. OK Miss Northern Enabler, a.k.a. TJ, it sounds so adorable doesn't it. I do want to do it bad but I was so trying not to order any more roses and start filling in more with other perennials. waaaaaaaa! If only I had tons of sunny space to work with but I don't. waaaaaaa!!!! Anyways, I was wanting some more english roses so I will probably hold off for a while anyways. Hope you are doing well! Tootles, Judy

I'm so happy to hear you have more photos! I check this gallery every day (I know, but no, I don't have anything better to do with my time) and today I got lucky. I just love Sweet Musette. My mom got it last year and this year it was like music next to her peach and lavender roses. I'm not crazy about blues and purples, but my mind is slowly changing with these beautiful and bright color combos. I love the blue with those hot pink petunias. What a beautiful photo- I wish I could see your garden from my yard! Renee

""One is greenhouse growing specialty tender plants like poinsetta." Not true. There is precious little money in a poinsettia crop" I know, I was surprised to learn they were doing this too. They must have found a higher paying market for them- maybe interior landscaping? I don't know more details, just that they are keeping that part of the business but looking to sell the retail store. They are growing other crops as well though, again, I don't have all the details. I dont' agree with the same comment about lily market, at least not daylily. The data I've seen is that there are perhaps 5 companies that are in the $10-20M annual revenue and literally hundreds below that. There are also quite a number in the $1-5M range. The majority are 58k varieties registered to date) for collectors and hobbyists. New intros are in the $100-400 range per single fan. Then the prices drop year by year until they range from $20-$4 for 2 fans on older cultivars that are still highly collected. Also, I agree that quality is a big concern and this limits the types of plants that are doing well. They tend to be sturdy plants that either go dormant or that are strong enough to tolerate digging, root cleaning, shipping well. There are state regulations on shipping that impact how they must be packaged and treated. Similar situation with Iris and Hosta. "I think this is a very important aspect of staying solvent and profitable in this industry. You have to really, really know your production costs and plot them against the returns. You cannot be all things to all people, and you need to define where your market with the highest return lays and not be sentimental about what isn't paying its way." Absolutely, I could not agree more! And you are correct, owning land is a major factor. In fact it also is a major barrier to those companies who are trying to sell their business because their land value is so high that they have a huge asking price for the business and it's tough to find buyers in that high range for a business that isn't turning enough profit to cover huge property loans. nwnatural, There are several Iris growers in my area which started me looking at this type of business. They aren't often "dig your own" as much as buyer walks the display bed and chooses what they want, then the owners or their workers dig the order from the increase beds. In the case of iris the order is usually held then dug & shipped in the fall once the plants have gone dormant. I've done a lot of internet research into what the companies are offering. I also use the ResearchUSA small business database available through my local library. That database allows you to search privately held companies by name, location, SIC codes and will give ballpark revenue along with some other details of the business. It's hard to tell how current the data is and there are many more companies in existence that have not made it into the database but it's a good place to get rough idea of a market and target business. I've added to that some interviews with insiders. Much more research to do before I would jump in though.

I agree that it is probably FKD. If you look at the pictures of that rose on HMF, it shows several with pink streaks on the buds, and also blooms appearing more double than 36 petals, and also clusters of blooms. In addition, there is one showing buds which look identical to those posted by allencia. Jackie