LADY BUG: WINTER IS THE DREAMING SEASON FOR GARDENERS

According to reports in current garden magazines, trends for future gardeners are smaller lawns, and the use of dwarf grasses that are more resistant to drought, disease and insects, and require less maintenance. This will reduce lawn cutting by as much as 50 percent. New varieties of trees and shrubs are being introduced with improved foliage and flowering, and new varieties of roses are being developed which require less spraying and have better winter hardiness.

This is said to be the dreaming season, though the things mentioned above are not just dreams. It is the time when it is good to look through the new catalogs and dream about the items for this coming season's gardens. How great they look in the new books.

At first catalogs were not coming in as they have in past years, and it was necessary to borrow some from a gardening friend. Then the new address was available to the old stand-bys, and a deluge of catalogs began arriving.

Most catalogs are free. A few have an initial charge, but after you have ordered once, you become an established customer and they will send them forever, sometimes in duplicate and sometimes even more.

Many companies specialize in one type of plant, such as roses, perennials, wildflowers, herbs, bulbs, trees, lilies, carnivorous plants, tomato growers supplies (with 250 varieties of tomatoes and 86 peppers) and many others that have specialities.

Two of my favorites are Wayside Gardens and White Flower Farm. Both are excellent references.

Previously, Seeds Blum, HC 33 Iowa City Stage, Boise, Idaho 83706 has been mentioned. This is a completely new concept of seed catalogs. It is not arranged in alphabetical order, but is based on botanical families. "Just as we enjoy learning about the families of our friends, so it is interesting to see the family relationship among our garden plants. Plants that are related tend to attract the same pests and diseases and also have the same nutritional needs."

The catalog is filled with heirloom varieties, many handed down from generation to generation.

A few years ago Spring Hill Nurseries started featuring ready to plant collections of perennial plants called Step-by-Step Gardening, designed by Derek Fell. This has been a most successful venture, and gardening friends who have tried these collections have reported great success.

Fell is the author of many books, a popular writer in garden magazines, and recently made the front page in The New York Times for his work with a successful garden show.

For the past 10 years, a television program that sells a product in an hour or half-hour format has tried to promote garden products. Diet programs and kitchen gadgets sold successfully but garden products floundered on QVC, the home shopping cable television network with 60 million subscribers.

Then a show was aired in September 1993 with an offer of a collection of bulbs and perennials for fall planting from the 100-year-old Spring Hill Nursery. The second show aired in early April, and was a tremendous success, as was the third.

A writer all his adult life, Fell made an about change in his thinking of television programming after this experience. One of his new books "500 Home Landscaping Ideas" published by Simon & Schuster, was offered for sale at the end of the program. "It is like lecturing," he said. "Hardly anyone buys your book until they have heard you speak."

Opening the boxes of the collections of plants, smelling the flowers, cutting the stems and showing their green leaves right there was far more effective advertising than using slides and just talking about them, he said.

Another show promoted collections of one plant variety, a collection of hardy chrysanthemums, a collection of Star Gazer lilies, and a collection of giant-sized gladiolus, plus some collections of different plants from the series in the catalog.

Although he had shunned television, and had concentrated on the printed medium because he felt the printed word lasts, Fell did comment that this experience had certainly changed his thinking, and he feels that home shopping style is now the way of the future, not only for successful selling of garden products, but also to sell the fun and benefits of gardening in general.

~Mary Blue is a resident of Cape Girardeau and an avid gardener.