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!

A spring such as this makes many of our early-summer bloomers grow larger than "normal", loaded heavily with blooms and big foliage that can easily lead to snapped or broken stems and floppy plants within a few more weeks. It's time to be out there with the stakes and hoops.

Even with extra support, that massive clump of Geranium 'Johnson's Blue' (pictured above) is likely to look a sad mess in about three weeks from now. It's a sure candidate for being sheared, and by this I don't mean a careful shaping with hand pruners. Run for the hedge shears, and just chop it all back to six inches or so. There will already be new leaves coming from the middle -- allow these to remain, but cut everything else back. The reward is new, compact foliage that stays neat and tidy through the rest of the season. Other candidates for a similar summer haircut include: Catmint (Nepeta), Yellow Loosestrife (Lysimachia), Perennial Salvia, and nearly always, Silver Mound Artemisia. If you're sceptical and have more than one plant, give one a haircut and leave the other alone. I'm sure the great results will convince you that this quick garden task is well worth the effort. Happy June shearing!

• Add plenty of organic matter to the bed, which improves soil drainage and at the same time improves moisture retention so plants don't dry out so quickly. Two inches of compost or moistened peat moss dug in to a depth of 6 to 8 inches will help immensely.
• Newly planted perennials will need regular watering during the summer. Watch for signs of wilting and water as soon as possible. Aim for a deep watering once a week rather than sprinkling lightly every few days. Watering by hand is fine, or use a well-aimed sprinkler or soaker hose. One inch of water per week should keep most newly planted perennials happy. This is easy to measure by placing an empty tuna can or margarine container in the sprinkler path and timing how long it takes to fill to one inch deep with water.
• Mulching around newly planted perennials helps to conserve moisture and keep their roots a bit cooler. It also reduces the task of weeding. Commercially bagged organic mulches are all good, for example shredded bark, pine nuggets, bagged compost or composted manure, cocoa beans, etc. For large areas buying mulch in bulk is often better value.
• Mulch should be no deeper than two inches. A really simple way to apply mulch over a new perennial planting is to turn the pots upside-down over your plants, spread the mulch then just remove the pots. Mulch should taper down to nothing the closer you get to the stems or crowns of your perennials. When deep mulch is in direct contact with perennial stems, various rots and fungus problems can develop and these may actually kill or damage your plants.
• When buying bargain perennials that are tall and spindly or floppy, it's often best to prune the plants back by at least half at planting time. They will grow new foliage and establish quickly. Aside from Peonies and true Lilies, most other perennials respond very well to pruning.
• A root-stimulating fertilizer may be helpful. Look for a soluble product that you mix with water, highest in the middle number. These are usually packaged as transplanting fertilizer.
• Perennials (and shrubs) are often rootbound in their containers. Your plants will establish more quickly and be healthier if you damage the rootball slightly before planting. Use an old kitchen knife and slice an X across the bottom of the rootball to a depth of about one inch. Spread this cut open a little and shove in a stone or handful of soil to keep it open. Larger plants might need some scoring along the sides of the rootball. This does damage the roots slightly, but during the repair process the new little roots quickly discover the garden soil and they grow out into it within a couple of weeks. If you don't do this important planting step your perennials might stay rootbound for a year or more!
• If you plan to be away on summer vacation, either have somebody water your new plantings in your absence, or wait and plant after you get back home. This is especially important in dry shady conditions caused by large and thirsty trees.

One of the keys to success with Bearded Iris is to choose the sunniest place in your garden, and to plant those rather strange (almost horizontal) rhizomes so that the top surface is just barely covered with soil. Too deep and they often fail to flower!

Edmonton area Master Gardener Donna Dawson and her husband Tom created this extremely busy and popular website several years ago and it just keeps getting better and better. Registering (for free) on the site gives you full access to many features, including live chats, discussion forums, a free newsletter, a huge archive of gardening articles, extensive listings of events and garden club home pages, up-to-date links to plant and seed suppliers, books and much more. There is even a place for seed savers to meet and trade what they have saved from their gardens.

Donna spends a great deal of her time hosting garden tours to interesting places all over the world, and we hear these tours are extremely popular and a lot of fun. The proof is in the pictures of the latest tours, often posted to the site within hours of being taken.

QUESTION: Last year I bought several plants of Coreopsis 'Limerock Ruby' and they were just fantastic -- bloomed all summer in the most amazing red shade. The labels said they were hardy to Zone 4 but every one of mine died. I noticed your website now lists them as Zone 8 and says they are "best treated as an annual in all but the mildest winter regions". What's up with that??!! Colleen -- Oshawa, Ontario

ANSWER: 'Limerock Ruby' has not turned out to be as hardy as first anticipated. It's an unfortunate situation resulting from a plant being thrust on the market without enough hardiness testing. We at Heritage Perennials® feel like idiots after having featured this selection as part of our Top 10 Perennials back in 2003, based on the information provided by Blooms of Bressingham North America who introduced this Coreopsis in 2002. The foliage looks like any other hardy type of threadleaf coreopsis, but the exact parentage is unknown. Many of us suspect it was a chance hybrid in a garden between a hardy form and another that is sometimes grown as an annual, so the winter reliability is shaky at best.

Although there was some hardiness testing done originally, but this may have occurred during a couple of particularly mild and dry winters. It's possible that wet soil conditions have more to do with lack of survival, rather than cold conditions. Here in southern Ontario we nearly always have wet soil during winter and through the entire spring, so long-term survival of 'Limerock Ruby' seems doubtful. It also seems to be unreliable at the west coast, judging by the e-mails we have received this spring from gardeners in the Vancouver region. Again, wet winter conditions probably are to blame. We have experienced significant losses of 'Limerock Ruby' in containers at both of our nurseries this past winter, despite the plants being held in coldframes and out of the snow and rains.

The colour is certainly a wonderful shade of red, and the plant responds beautifully as an annual so long as it gets a midsummer shearing to prevent flopping. We are continuing to sell this as a tender perennial now, with label and website information updated to reflect the experience that gardeners across North America have reported. Perennial growers and retail nurseries across the continent sold millions of 'Limerock Ruby' in 2002/2003 and it's been a real learning experience for the industry. As a grower we are now much more sceptical about jumping on top of new introductions until we have had some experience with them ourselves, yet there is enormous pressure to always have a ton of new plants at the same time. This is a fine balance to try and juggle but I feel strongly that it's worth waiting a year or two with something new so we can feel comfortable in standing behind its performance in home gardens.

Blooms of Bressingham has a good track record overall with their many introductions over the years. This particular incident was an unfortunate one. They have since come out with two more new Coreopsis, 'Creme Brulee' (which is supposed to be as hardy as 'Moonbeam') and 'Limerock Passion', which is another tender one. I have high hopes for 'Creme Brulee' although I suspect it too will need a midsummer shearing to prevent flopping. If you are looking for a replacement for the 'Limerock Ruby', this one would be worth considering. Or, stick to good old 'Moonbeam' which has a proven track record for long bloom, good vigor if drainage is adequate, and good hardiness.