What Are Those Red/Pink Roses Everywhere?

There are plenty of commercial plantings out there that seem to only use a very limited, if dependable, palette of plants.  Those yellow Stella D'oro daylilies are everywhere, for example, and why not?  They bloom for long time, can handle the worst of our winters without a problem, and can pretty much be neglected yet still thrive as if in the hands of an obsessive gardener.  I get a lot of questions about how to get such miraculous plants, as well as about plants that feature prominently in malls, downtown areas, office complexes, etc.  One such plant is that lovely rose that you can find just about everywhere.

Yes, they are everywhere, but I only have this one poorly backlit picture. 

They are called Knock Out roses, a shrub rose (amazing, bush-growing roses that are great in general landscaping, beds or alone or whatever place you can throw them in) that blooms as much as a floribunda (roses that bloom more than any other woody perennial in existence; this description is only partially exaggerated).  They are a lovely reddish-magenta, bloom like crazy throughout the growing season until the first heavy frost, nearly indestructible even in the face of wintery doom and summer heat, and are often on sale if not cheap as hell already.  As a result, they get planted a lot in those high-beauty, low-maintenance situations demanded by parking lot landscaping.  Often, this means they get abused with rocks for mulch and torched in concrete beds, almost never protected during winter and rarely irrigated. 

In short, if you want pretty roses that you can practically ignore, well, they have tons of these at your average garden section at most big box stores, and healthier specimens at dedicated nurseries.  They can fill the gap of your "I need something pretty and big" or "I need something that takes neglect well".  Granted, they also respond well with some care, and that color... well let's just say it's lovely enough to form the centerpiece for the theme of an entire garden.  I am a bit rose crazy this summer, but believe me when I say that Knock Outs are an easy yet lovely choice for SE Michigan.