I ordered one tree from Arboreum and didn't receive it during the normal planting season, despite numerous emails to them. I finally did receive the tree. Then a few weeks later received an email asking if I received my tree. I told them I did. Received another email from them a while later telling me the carrier mistakenly sent my tree to Bucyrus, Ohio instead of Bucyrus KS and they couldn't track the tree down. I told them I had already received my tree, but they sent me another one anyway. I ended up getting both trees in very good condition. Aboreum gets a "D" in communication, but I give them a "B+" (or even an A-) overall because their stock is very good and they really do try to satisfy their customers in the end. They just need to read their emails. I ordered just a couple different plums to try from Burnt Ridge. One was OK, but the other had pretty bad damage to the trunk (damage about 2/3 the way through the trunk). Tree did leaf out and is still alive. I got 25 trees from Adams. They were fine except that one tree had an active crown gall on the roots, which confirmed why I've seen crown gall on some of their trees I've dug up and moved. I've had a couple bad experiences in the past with C&O and probably won't order from them again. One problem as Milehigh mentioned, is the extra fees they tack on, making their trees expensive. Another issue is that one year they couldn't fill my order because frigid winter weather killed some of their stock. That's understandable, but they kept my deposit money (as a credit to my account) instead of sending it back to me. This happened once with Arboreum, but like any good business, Arboreum refunded my money to me in the form of a check.

My experience will vary greatly from the OP, but I thought I'd chime in. I have purchased over the years a lot of bands from Heirloom. I have grown to truly love own root roses in my garden. I have found that potting them in one gallon containers until I see roots out to the sides of the pots (yes, I'll check now and then) and then potting them in the ground (as long as this is before it starts hitting 100 degrees outside) works here. Usually its warm enough here that this can be as little as 4-6 weeks, so I might order them for January delivery and have them in the ground in February (I just planted two Ruby Baby miniatures this way, for example). I'm still waiting on Amazing Grace, the only non-miniature I got from them this year, to begin to seem ready to even check the roots. Usually while they are busy making lots of good roots, there's only minimal growth up top, and usually its longer for a large rose to be ready to go into the ground. I think its going slow because its not in a nice heat absorbing black plastic pot, its in a handy ceramic pot so it might have a bit cooler temp in there. I think the other two minis could go in the ground except the location I want to place them is very close to the front sidewalk and so I want some more size on them topside before I risk stray steps or wandering dogs in the wrong place. We have no front fence. Note that these were potted and grown in a spot that is south facing on my front porch and get full sun all day. In January/February here that temp ranged from 60-78 deg for a high so far this year, so they enjoy that kind of warmth to the soil to help stimulate the root growth. Velvet Fragrance is one I bought own root, at the end of the second growing season (remember the zone difference here) I could not tell it apart in size/strength from any other rose planted at the same time on Dr. Huey bare root. It has nearly died twice due to watering issues in my zone but has come back strong both times. I'm convinced had it been on rootstock it would have died entirely the first time around. That one I kept potted for a full year before planting it in the ground, but at the time I had a sizable pot ghetto and was sorting out what was going where. It went from band to a one gallon after receipt, and then into a five gallon after roots were showing out the bottom of the one gallon. Keeping it well watered through an AZ summer is pretty key.

Thank you for all of your words of encouragement! Well, I held off for as long as possible... Right after I got back from vacation we had a week of temps near 112, and I did nothing but water, mist and pray. Today, I couldn't stand looking at my poor roses any longer, so with the temps back below normal I ventured out into the garden, pruners in hand. The floribundas seem to have survived the best - I only needed to give them a light prune, and I even have a Julia Child in bloom. Not surprisingly perhaps, my David Austins suffered the most. Some of them lost all their leaves, so I trimmed them up, and cut them back by about one third. We'll see what happens now. If there's one thing I've learnt about roses, it's that they're tough little buggers. I just feel bad that they've had to go through such a trauma! Happy Gardening everyone. Provence

Mary, It sure sounds like you had a wandering passionvine that wandered right out of its bed. Being that I'm so far north (PA), I don't know if they could even get a chance to wander from one place to another. I'd be lucky to just get them to live outside at all over the winter. I think if I want them, I'll have to dug a few up every fall and bring them inside and then take them back outside the following spring. Btw, I don't blame you for not wanting to try that passionvine again for fear that it might have contaminants on for the cats. If you decide to raise any paw paws, if I were you I'd either start them from seed like I did or buy them as potted plants, but after my experiences of getting bareroot paw paw trees in the mail without them living either time, I would NOT buy a bareroot paw paw. I suspected that I got junk both times, and I was probably right. I mentioned those times to someone who I trust to know about these things and here's what he said: "You are right in what you said about online folks not caring sometimes. But it gets worse. What you probably bought in those big pawpaw trees is just a sucker from the roots that was yanked out of the ground with little care. Pawpaws sucker pretty freely and some people think that selling the stem with little roots is the same as selling a tree. It is not." So, I really would recommend getting a potted paw paw tree and NOT a bareroot one. When I received the paw paw trees in the mail, they didn't even look like they had a root, but I thought maybe that's the way they're supposed to look. I think it's just like that person told me and that they were just yanked out and were suckers off of other trees, not an individual tree. Besides, I have since seen online a pic of a person using a backhoe to dig up a small paw paw tree that was only a few feet high. It was a shock to see just how far a person would have to dig to get all of the root out of the ground. Yes, for fruit you have to have two trees for pollination if you want to get fruit from the trees, which I do. My original reason for wanting the trees was just for the Zebra Swallowtails, but the more I read about paw paws, I thought that they sure do sound good! Anyway, there's my paw paw advice FWIW, and I'm not sure if one tree would bring in the butterflies or not. I plan on having at least half a dozen. That's great that you saw some butterflies. They won't be here for awhile yet. MissSherry, That's great that one of your Zebra Swallowtails emerged! I can hardly wait to see the pictures of it. If you try raising them again, I really hope that you don't have a lot of trouble with them like last year. Hopefully it was just a bad year for them or something and that won't be commonplace whenever you raise them. That's the way it goes with the GSTs with me. It's really frustrating that they drop dead right and left. They can be right on the rue and crawl right off acting like they don't even recognize it as a host plant. I even tried putting them back on, but they crawled off again. If they die, they almost always die when they're very small. I'm looking forward to the day (more like year) when my couple of wafer ash trees will be big enough to support a fair number of cats. I want to see if the plant improves their survival rate. I also started gas plants last year, and it will be interesting to see if the GSTs lay any eggs on them. I don't recall anyone on here saying that they raised any on gas plants. It's supposed to be in the 70's and low 80's here for about 5 days starting on Thursday. Yay!!! Cathy