I wasn't always into roses. The very first thing I planted at this house was a "Peace" Hybrid-Tea rose (hey, hey, take it easy... I said I was a rookie). I hacked away enough Oregon Grape to make room for it, and plunked the rose into the rocky soil of my front yard on the day we moved in. It did surprisingly well, considering the conditions, but it was always prone to blackspot (at least in my yard), and the colour faded too quickly from the blooms when we had a sunny spell. It was a nice plant, but it didn't blow me away, and I just assumed that most roses would be much the same. I found this rose growing in a "wild" part of my back yard. It must have been put in by the previous owner, but competing with everything else, it only bloomed last year. It wasn't until three years later, when my wife and I were camping, that I ran across a Nootka Rose in our camp site. It's strange. It wasn't some magnificent old garden rose that caught my attention, and made me take a fresh look at roses. It was a single-flowering native Rosa Nutkana that seemed so naturally healthy and vigorous on that day, that I just knew I was going to have to make space for a few roses in my garden. Since then, I've figured out a few things about roses (with the help of some of the sites listed below). There are whole families of roses that aren't much like the Hybrid-Tea rose I first planted. The roses I've been planting recently are a mix of old garden roses, species roses, and modern shrubs. So far, they've more than met my expectations. And now that I'm keeping an open mind, there are even a couple of Hybrid Tea roses that I wouldn't be without (blackspot and all). Here are some of my favourite rose sites: A fantastic mail order rose nursery, right here in Canada. Everything I've ordered from them has done well in the garden. Reasonable prices. Great selection. Some own-root roses available. HelpMeFind.com Roses  Find, compare, rate roses. The most comprehensive database I've found on Roses. Any time a roses catches my interest, this is the site I go to for the full scoop. Most of their rose pages also have user-contributed images. Paul Barden's Old Garden Roses and Beyond is an outstanding resource on roses. The site author is a rose expert and breeder who gives us his ratings on roses that he's grown, as well as articles and insights on other rose related topics. The site also collects rose related articles and resources from other authors. Rogers Roses  A great place to have a look at Roger Phillips' photography of roses, along with descriptions and recommendations. I've picked up a few books co-authored by Phillips and Martyn Rix, and I find them to be great resources. The site seems more focused on Great Britain, but heck, you've gotta know that if you're into roses, you're going to run into the British every now and again. The American Rose Society has a good site. Check out this list of outstanding roses, sorted by class. You can have a look at the sites for the Canadian Rose Society and the Vancouver Rose Society as well, but the ARS site is the more comprehensive site. Into miniature roses? I'm not quite there yet. But it's interesting to know that one world-class breeder of miniatures operates a nursery right here in the fraser valley. You can check out these roses at Brad Jalbert's Select Roses, based out of Langley. The nursery sells miniatures and full-size roses by mail order, and seasonally on-site. Another big name in BC rose growing is Christine Allen. She shares her gardening knowledge by writing books & articles, and through speaking engagements with garden organizations. Check out her Killara Farm Roses site for her expertise on "historic and classic roses suitable for gardens of the northwest coast".  She makes her roses available for sale at Free Spirit Nursery, also in Langley. Many rose gardeners have begun to prefer "own-root" roses; plants rooted from cuttings rather than budded onto the rootstock of another variety. Both of the sites listed directly above propagate roses in this manner, and for more information on the advantages of own root roses, check out the information on their sites. Here in BC, we're fortunate to have a good number of suppliers of own-root and heritage roses. Two other suppliers are Cedar Hollow Rose Farm in Vernon, and Old Rose Nursery on Hornsby Island. I haven't made purchases from either, but they each have some hard to find varieties available. Can I sneak in one more site with information on old garden roses, and disease resistance ?  Sorry, not much here on modern roses, is there? Oh well. I also like this site: Old Lady of Old Roses. She rates both old and modern roses for disease resistance in our climate. For discussion, questions, and rose chat in general, it seems the place is GardenWeb. Actually, GardenWeb is quite a large gardening site altogether, which is in turn a part of iVillage, a site completely designed for women. GardenWeb itself seems somewhat gender neutral (except for the ads), but I still can't surf this site without knowing that I'm always just a click-and-a-half away from getting the latest beauty and fashion, or taking a relationship quiz. Anyhow, they've sorted all of their rose-related links into one corner of the site.