Personally, I find the 'best' place to grow roses is to grow roses that like and appreciate your climate, your abilities, and your methods of gardening. My area of the country is great for roses in December but is really tough on roses in August. Most roses LOVE our winters and only the strongest will continue year after year with summer heat records and continued drought conditions. We have few rose diseases in the low desert and most of the really nasty critters, pests, diseases and weather conditions that kill or stunt roses aren't part of our Phoenix gardening experience. I'd like to grow lilacs, peonies, cherries and peaches but they either require more water, moderate temps or lower pH. Roses would like the same but are willing to tolerate what I can give 'em. :)

Big tree Diameter 230 cm, height 41 m, crown spread 24 m, located in Newton, GA (American forests 1996). The specimen with greatest known stem volume was the "Senator" (also called the "Sovereign Cypress"), located in Big Tree Park, Longwood, Florida. This tree had a dbh 344 cm, a height of 35.0 m, and an approximate stem volume of 119.4 m 3 (Van Pelt 1998), but it was set on fire by a local resident and burned on January 15-16, 2012 (Huffington Post 2012). This is another in a long list of cases where an extraordinarily large, tall, old, or otherwise significant tree has been destroyed because of its celebrity. Oldest I have found no reliable data. The "Senator" mentioned above was popularly described as 3,500 years old but there was no data to support this speculative age, which has been variously described as the determination of "experts" in the 1930s or determined by "increment borer" which is not logical given that the tree was hollow. Since it experienced nearly ideal growing conditions, it is quite possible that it was much younger. http://www.conifers.org/cu/Taxodium_distichum_imbricatum.php

This is indeed sad. And startlingly common. We are losing so many old family businesses to our modern mindset. I see a great deal of this in my classroom, with high schoolers. It worries me; we aren’t content to be a part of something with history and longevity, but want to express our uniqueness as individuals more than we want to honor the past. It used to be that you took great pride in assuming the business your family built from sweat and tears, but now so many young people look at these businesses with disdain, and don’t have an appreciation for what it means to have kept a business alive for so long.

My mom is 78 years old and runs 9 miles a day at an 8 minute mile pace. She has worked out my entire life...she was dragging us to muscle gyms in the 70s to lift weights way before fitness was even a thing, She always ate well...we were the house without sweets where a glass of orange juice was a treat. She instinctively practiced intermittent fasting, ate tons of nuts, lower carbs her whole life. Routinely she only eats 2 meals with a few handfuls of nuts in between meals and has done so for decades. She just went to get a medical work up for the first time at 77. The doctors were incredulous at her fitness. Her arteries were as clear as a 3 year old. She truly is a testament to the effect of lifestyle choices on aging as my dad is the same age; he smoked, drank, ate terribly and is housebound and ill. Maybe had they remained married, her choices would have kept him healthier. Ironically, her work out time was always a source of arguments and one of the reasons they didn't get along.