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!

Where to start is often the question. Consider prioritizing the spring chores to make the most effective use of your time. Here are a few tips:

• cut back all of the old foliage from Lenten Rose-type Helleborus (pictured above) at the first possible opportunity. The new flowers look so much better without last year's leaves hanging around. Do NOT cut back Helleborus niger, H. argutifolius, H. foetidus types. If you're not sure which you have, leave them alone.
• cut the entire top growth of Barrenwort (Epimedium) down to the ground. Again, this gets rid of tired old leaves and allows the flowers to really make a beautiful show. Do this task as soon as possible in late winter/early spring, before the new growth appears.
• get rid of debris from lawn and path areas. It's better for the emerging grass but mostly (like vacuuming your living room rug) it makes everything else around look more neat and tidy.
• early-blooming bulbs may need to be rescued from a smothering mat of soggy leaves. This is picky work, best done with your hands, especially if things like Snowdrops are already showing buds or blooms -- a rake would just snap these off.
• with your perennials, clean up those that emerge early before bothering with tardy risers like fall-flowering ornamental grasses. The goal is to cut back the old stuff before new growth appears, so you don't have to deal with a tangle of the two together.
• keep an eye out for overwintered annual weeds and yank them out while still small. Chickweed, garlic mustard and henbit are the worst in my garden. Get them before they grow and go to seed!

Smart gardeners do a lot of their cleanup in the late fall, something I tell myself each spring that I'm going to do this year. I'm hoping that by putting it in writing it might actually happen.

This month we picked the three best entries. Congratulations go out our three winners, listed below along with their entries. Each will receive a copy of the Perennial Gardening Guide.

From all of the entries, two things were obvious: gardeners everywhere are fighting with more-or-less the same weeds. Secondly, many gardeners don't know the names of the weeds that are growing in their gardens. Before you can plan a successful course of action, it's important to know the enemy. We have a few links to weed photo gallery sites in different regions.

• Ontario Weeds (from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture) has an excellent picture gallery that contains the vast majority of common garden weeds, even the ones that grow in far distant parts of North America.
• Rutgers State University of New Jersey
• University of California (Davis) Weed Gallery
• Washington State Noxious Weed Control Board
• Restricted, Noxious and Nuisance Weeds in Alberta: FAQ's is a good resource for gardeners right across the Prairies and Northern Great Plains.

"I must say the WORST weed problem that I have is the dreaded chickweed. The first year I had my home, I actually had a landscaper over in the early spring and he told me it was a groundcover and to leave it alone. He did NOT recognize it as chickweed. Being somewhat naive, I took his suggestion to heart and by the time I discovered it was chickweed I had already planted quite a few bulbs. The problem seems to get worse every year. Now I am actually considering moving to get away from it. I deal with it continually all summer and the more I try, the more it seems to grow. It truly is an amazing plant and I have heard that it makes a very tasty salad but I've never tried it." Maggie -- Calgary, Alberta

"When I bought my first house a few years ago, I had no gardening experience. A flower bed at the front was completely covered in a vine that had attractively-shaped leaves and pretty little white and pink flowers and I thought to myself what a lovely groundcover it was. It looked like a miniature version of morning glory. Then I noticed that the vine was also growing quite prolifically at the side of the house and it soon became clear that this was no ordinary plant. In fact, it could well have come from another planet! It was an invasion to end all invasions. I pulled. I sprayed. I dug up roots. Anything I did was just a temporary cosmetic fix. Finally I learned the name of my nemesis -- field bindweed. Eventually I abandoned the idea of planting flowers at the front and put down landscape fabric and bag after bag of mulch. Now just a few shrubs relieve the tedium (and the bindweed snakes its way up the branches). Last summer I noticed that the monster is invading my perennial beds in the back garden and this time it has combined forces with creeping Charlie and is launching an assault from my neighbour's lawn through the chain link fence. It's March. Growing season is underway. Let the battles begin!". Pat -- Windsor, Ontario

Each year we introduce new and exciting varieties of perennials and the best way to determine how they perform season after season is via feedback from real gardeners - like you! And that's what this Club is about. Joining the Club is free. Once or twice a year we'll contact you, requesting that you take a moment to login to this site and rate the plant or plants that you've registered. Our rating system is simple and it will only take a moment for each plant, but we also welcome and encourage your comments.

Canadian gardeners will find this reference to be equally useful: in the days before agricultural inspections became mandatory, nursery plants and seeds were freely imported from other countries, particularly the United States. Canadian gardeners looking for information in this book can use the chapters from regions directly to the south and find exactly what they're looking for.

Denise has quoted extensively from period sources here, many of them rather obscure and wonderful. It's astonishing how the words of writers from over a century ago can seem so current: "The ornamental gardening of the country is very rapidly undergoing a change, particularly in its application to home or private grounds. The formal and purely conventional features of ornamentation are giving place to the freer use of hardy perennials and native plants... Carpet bedding seems to have passed its zenith..." -- Liberty Hyde Bailey, 1891.

Cleverly structured for both good reading as well as fast reference, the book includes handy lists of plants used historically by region, each section further organized by time period and year of introduction. Not every old plant is still considered good, so the lists of regionally invasive species are a helpful addition. The source listing for hard-to-find plants is outstanding, and the Bibliography must be the most thorough ever published on this topic.

QUESTION: Last summer I planted a perennial Hibiscus and it was beautiful. I don't see any sign of it yet in my garden. Has it died, and should I cut it back or not? Katie -- Oakville, Ontario

ANSWER: Some perennials show signs of life very early in the spring, while others do not. The perennial Hibiscus ('Lord Baltimore' is pictured above) is always late to come up -- very late, in fact. In Zones 5 and 6 it may not show any signs of new growth until the end of May or even into June. All the new growth comes from below the ground, so the entire dead top from last year should be cut right back to ground level. This can be done in the fall or spring, but the dead tops can be a handy thing to "mark the spot" so you avoid accidentally digging the plant up.