Heritage Perennials® are grown by Valleybrook Gardens, an innovative and leading producer of over 1500 varieties of perennials, hardy ferns and ornamental grasses. Our distinctive blue pots of HERITAGE PERENNIALS® are available from independent retailers and dealers in many parts of Canada and the USA. We're passionate about perennials! We hope this newsletter helps you to enjoy your perennial gardening even more.

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Our best-selling book, the Perennial Gardening Guide is a handy reference used by gardeners across North America — written by our own Horticulturist, John Valleau. Released March/2003 in a brand new 4th edition!

Attending a garden show is indeed a wonderful thing, but creating a garden display or setting up a vending booth involves enormous amounts of planning and hard labor. This "backstage" aspect of a show is as fascinating as standing in the wings of a Broadway play. For most shows the setup and teardown time are at least as long as the show itself. Builders and designers spend extremely long days putting it all together, creating this instant sort of garden theatre that will be sadly dismantled after the show is over. Even before the loading docks are open, growers have spent months handling and forcing thousands of plants to hit exactly the right stage in their development, to reach the elusive moment of perfection. For every plant on view at a show there are at least one or two still in a greenhouse that didn't quite meet the grade.

Setup is chaos for the most part, with everybody all scrambling to unload their trucks, move skids of stone, piles of sand and a million other things amidst a fog of diesel fumes and so much dust that it invades every pore of your skin.

For any garden show to be a success it takes untold hours of volunteer effort from dedicated people such as Garden Club members and Master Gardeners. If you've got some spare time, consider contacting one of your local garden shows to see if an extra set of hands is needed. They often ask for only a few hours of help in trade for free admission to the show and perhaps to educational seminars. Even if you're back doesn't feel up to building stone walls, there are always plenty of lighter activities on the duty list.

If you're at Canada Blooms during setup, you're bound to find me on site. I'll be the guy chained to a computer making most of the plant labels for the many display gardens. Education is such an important component of a garden show, and it thrills me to no end to watch gardeners wandering through the displays making lists of plants and reading all of those little plastic signs. It's a really minor task but one that I hope helps to make your garden show experience even more pleasant and worthwhile.

"The most loved and valued sentimental plant in my garden is my fig tree. I am 62 years old and my fig tree is from a cutting from my childhood yard. I remember our whole family enjoying figs from my father's fig tree. When my older brother grew and moved to a home in the country he planted a cutting and his fig tree flourished. When my husband and I bought a home 6 years ago my brother gave me a cutting and now my fig tree is flourishing. I have passed on cuttings to neighbors here in New Jersey and relatives in Virginia. My father's humble little fig tree has continued to spread to more locations than I even know about. Each winter I wrap it carefully in burlap, and each spring it returns more beautifully than the year before. My husband and I recently purchased a home in Virginia and I have already started several cuttings, one for our new home and new neighbors, others to leave to friends here. And I'm hoping that the new owners of our home here will love the fig tree as much as I do." Tina -- Chatham, New Jersey

"In the year of 1997 we moved to a new house in Camarillo, CA. Our next-door neighbor had some beautiful hanging plants and also cactus plants and she shared numerous cuttings with me. I still have a small cactus that always reminds me of Elsie, my neighbor, who died a couple of years after we moved next to her. She was without a doubt a lovely lady, 92 years young and so fun to visit with. Whenever I water this little cactus I think of her and I am so happy to have kept this little cactus alive in several more moves." Rose -- California

"My sentimental plant has to be a honeysuckle vine I planted over six years ago. The first spring after we had moved into our home I planted this vine because my parents have always had one that bloomed and grew so beautifully. Mine never bloomed or grew well until I threatened it -- that I would pull it out if it didn't do 'something'! Well, two springs ago it started to grow and then proceed to bloom throughout the season. I left it alone, secretly thrilled that I hadn't pulled it as it was really, truly magnificent -- gave my parents' plant a run for its 'blooms', so to speak. Last year... nothing. I think it may be time to have another little chat..." Lisa -- Kanata, Ontario

"My dearest old friend, a 'Frances Williams' hosta [see picture above], has been the matriarch of my gardens. She has been with me since the garden started its beginnings. She has graced me with numerous divisions thereby allowing a kind of surrogate relationship with her and her family as they have grown up and taken residence in my ever-growing gardens. We have been bonded together now for over 15 years and she is still as vibrant looking as ever. It is almost magical, the feeling I get every time I visit her when I take those wonderful strolls through the gardens. 'Sentimentality' and 'companionship' are the first words that come to mind. I hope she plans to stay with me forever..." Terri -- Chatham, Ontario

• March 3 - 7, 2004. Toronto, Ontario. CANADA BLOOMS. Canada's largest indoor garden show, featuring a huge marketplace, lavish display gardens, amazing floral competitions and superb educational series.
• March 4 - 7, 2004. Nashville, TN. Southerners will want to try and catch The NASHVILLE LAWN & GARDEN SHOW.
• March 7 - 14, 2004. Philadelphia, PA. The PHILADELPHIA FLOWER SHOW is celebrating its 175th Anniversary this year. This is the granddaddy of all North American flower shows, an absolute not-to-miss event if you can possibly catch it.
• March 11 - 14, 2004. Stratford, Ontario. Smaller regional garden shows are more intimate and relaxed, and one of our favourites is the STRATFORD GARDEN FESTIVAL.
• March 17 - 21, 2004. San Francisco, CA. The SAN FRANCISCO FLOWER & GARDEN SHOW will be chock full of great ideas for Northern California conditions.
• March 18 - 21, 2004. Rochester, NY. Another small but charming regional show is GARDENSCAPE 2004.

There are, however, over 37 thousand named and registered cultivars of Hemerocallis and an unknown number of unregistered selections around. There are thousands of new hybrids created each year, which makes selecting the right ones a challenge. By choosing from the best bred stock you can add some HEAT to your garden this year. Happy Ever Appster® and Trophytaker® Daylilies are two excellent lines of superior selections that make the gardeners job of choosing so much easier.

Happy Ever Appster® is the world's first line of everblooming daylilies. From internationally-respected hybridizer Dr. Darrel Apps come these incredibly long bloomers. The parent plant 'Happy Returns' is arguably now the most popular daylily in the world. From this truly everblooming specimen Dr. Apps isolated the recessive everblooming gene and crossed it with other selections to produce spectacular pinks, reds and multi-coloured repeat and everblooming beauties, with triple the bloom-time of an average daylily.

• Happy - all varieties are bred from the original 'Happy Returns'.
• Ever - everblooming daylilies that flower from late spring to frost.
• Appster - hybridized by world-renowned daylily breeder, Dr. Darrel Apps.

Although 'Red Hot Returns' is a striking long-blooming red, my hands down favourite has to be 'Apricot Sparkles' [pictured above]. These remarkable apricot blooms are described as having a diamond-dusted finish and when you see them they look like they have been covered with glitter. They actually sparkle! If you want outstanding colour all season, from plants which have bloomed in trials for over 105 days, these are the right choice.

Trophytakers® are called "The Pacesetter for Performance". Bloom is not the only factor to consider when choosing a good performer. From a selection of the world’s best daylilies Dr. Darrel Apps trialed 8000 cultivars based on a stringent set of criteria. The plants were judged on beauty, hardiness, clump vigor, blooming performance, foliage and pest resistance. Dr. Apps looks for strong flowers with more blooms per plant and at least double the bloom-time of the average daylily. Varieties have to be hardy to at least USDA Zone 5 with many of them hardy well into Zones 3 and even 2. Plants must triple the number of fans in the first year and have nice foliage all season long. They need to have the highest level of resistance to pests and diseases possible.

Trophytakers® are simply the best daylilies you can find. From the initial trials only 40 varieties were found that made the grade. Choosing a Trophytaker® is like getting the Rolex or Mercedes of daylilies. If you want to have an easy-care and long-blooming plant, these are fabulous. I would have to say that 'Strawberry Candy' -- with its coral petals and strawberry centre -- is one of the most impressive, and best Trophytakers and 'Siloam Amazing Grace' is simply brilliant. The blooms are thick and full and huge! Now that you have the best forty to choose from all you need to do is pick your favourite colour.

You might say it’s high time we change the name from Hemerocallis to Summerocallis... from "beauty for a day" to beauty all summer long! For more information and to see some fantastic pictures of all of these lovelies in bloom check out www.perennials.com and click the links down in the bottom left corner.

If you had the 3rd edition of the Perennial Gardening Guide you may remember all those wonderful quotes sprinkled throughout the plant entries. They had to get removed for lack of space in the 4th edition, but we will be adding them to the website very soon.