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!

Ah... conference time. Each year I go to the Perennial Plant Symposium put on by the Perennial Plant Association. This is a professional association made up mainly of growers, retailers, landscape designers, garden writers and educators from across the US and Canada. For me, the Symposium is a time to recharge my passion for perennial plants and gardening. The conference itself is always great, with excellent speakers who present a wide range of topics, but it's actually the garden tours and just spending time with old friends and colleagues that I find so very special. If you happen to be anywhere near New York City the week of July 4 to 10 and have some time on your hands, please consider attending at least part of the Symposium this year.

I always learn lots of new things every year at the conference, ranging from garden design ideas to pest & disease control or just hearing about great new plant varieties. I'll be sure to report back in late summer and fall on what's new and interesting at this year's Perennial Symposium.

The display was designed and co-presented by Reinier van de Poll of VAN DE POLL Garden Design. The Show theme this year was "Garden Tales: Gardens from Literature". This winning garden was an interpretation of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff".

Judges commented that: "This garden is beautifully designed and executed. The scale, composition, and artfulness of the display are incomparable. It shows that a display does not have to be large or splashy to come forward as a clear winner. The materials are well chosen; the arrangement of the plants was done with discernment. The interpretation of the story is both innovative and humourous."

Reinier van de Poll tried to create "A garden with endless views. The designer's goal was to give each visitor to our feature display garden a sense of mystery and curiosity -- drawing them in to discover a surprise around each corner."

QUESTION: I would like to know whether I should cut off the flowers of Columbine after they finish flowering? Also, Foxglove? Bonnie -- Markham, Ontario

ANSWER: I like to let at least a few of my Columbine (Aquilegia) plants go to seed. Columbine tend to be short-lived plants (2 - 4 years) and they don't take well to being divided. This allows self-sown seedlings to develop in case you lose some of your older plants over the winter. If you want to start a new patch somewhere just wait until the seedpods turn tan colour and dry (they will split open), cut off the stem and shake the seedpods like a rattle, scattering the little seeds on the ground. Some seeds will germinate later in the fall and give you flowering plants for next year; some seeds will wait until spring to germinate, giving you more plants for the year after. Columbine plants are rather promiscuous, so if you have more than one species or variety in the garden the resulting seedlings are bound to show up in a mixture of colours. Hopefully nice ones.

Gardeners everywhere have been looking for this introduction but few have found any available. Unexpected delays in the tissue culture laboratory are partly to blame, but something else rather interesting occurred in those test tubes. A brand new "sport" or mutation has appeared which has been named Echinacea Mango Meadowbrite™ ('CBG Clone 3'). Growers are busy sorting out their crops at this point in time, something that is fairly easy to do.