A few years back, I got a Totally Tomatoes Catalog. I ordered a few seeds, sending in my order with payment, as opposed to ordering on line. By that fall, they had passed my name on to others, and I got a total of 24 different gardening catalogs in the mail. That was all it took. Most have since stopped mailing to me though, since I didn't order from any of them, but I still get them from several places. I don't buy any plants via mail, but instead search all nurseries in passing for new stuff, and discounted plants. Last Sun I found 1 gal shrubs that were already moderately priced, on sale at 40% off. Needless to say I found 11 new (to me) items I just could not live without at those prices. I got them at a Rural King...a Farm and Home store. Sue...always on 'the lookout' for bargains everywhere

I'm happy to see the delightful polyantha Charles Metroz on the list. I was very impressed when I saw him at Eurodesert--enough that I bought 2 mother plants. Capable of blooming in huge sprays. Fragrant when the weather warms up, not so much when it is cool. When studying Cliff Orent's polyanthas, this one was so charming I wanted to take him home. It's an add little story though. Bought the first one when it was pretty warm (but not scorching) in the spring. I trimmed him back and someone helping Cliff dug him up and potted him for me. I was really puzzled at the roots, because darned if it looked as if he had a taproot. I thought, no, couldn't be. But this rose alone among those I took home that day wilted really badly in the 90 miles drive home. I watered him like all the others when I got home, and all of them bounced back except Charles Metroz. This one I tried everything, but he died. So I decided to buy the other, but just in case I had really seen a taproot, I would take precautions. The day the 2nd one came home was roasting in the afternoon--think around 115 or 116. I had him dug up last of all, after I trimmed him back. Carefully watched him being dug up, and there really was a taproot. I had him put in a lighter colored pot (mid green instead of black). Got home and took CM out of the van first and right into the shade. He had already wilted quite a bit (one or 2 others had only a tiny bit, amazingly), so I sprayed him with water and thoroughly doused the pot. He recovered, and I still have him but still in the pot in which he arrived. I'm afraid to chance disturbing that taproot again. I can't recall which rootstock is known for this trait. Anybody have a better memory??? The other one in the cataolog I also found quite intriguing at Eurodesert was Jeanny Soupert. Very confounding rose. Much prettier seen firsthand than in any pictures I've seen. She seemed to be able to color change too. Some of my photos show a rose with both yellow and white flowers. Other times she look pink and white. Habit was spreading. I didn't have a good spot for her but she was certainly pretty and different. Photo is of Jeanny Soupert Melissa

Laurie, I mostly get the lemon or rose scented geraniums as they are two of my favorite fragrances. For me in zone 7/8 they are treated as annuals. I have yet to be able to winter one over in my garden no matter how much I protect them. I sometimes do pot them up and bring them inside for the winter. I hope to do that with the ones in my garden now. I will have to trim the root ball and entire plant because they have gotten huge. My favorites are; Attar of Rose, Lemon Crispum, Rober's Lemon Rose and Nutmeg. The flowers are usually small but pretty. The main reason most people grow them is for the fragrant leaves. You can put them into tea and other drinks, I like to add them to sugar to make a flavored sugar to roll cookies in before baking and sometime put the cleaned leaves into the bottom of the cake pan before pouring in the batter. Sort of like an upside down cake. I am adding a link here to a nursery that stocks quite an assortment. Hope this is helpful. Kat Here is a link that might be useful: Scented Geraniums

OK, here's a few to get you started. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com) has some of the old standbys that tolerate our widely changeable weather. Seeds they offer include a lot of the annuals commonly grown from seed like zinnias, asters, cosmos, datura, love-in-a-mist, castor beans, etc. Select Seeds offers seeds of many varieties of heirlooms, and sells some plants as well. A lot of the seeds they offer can be found in other places, but some of them I've never seen offered anywhere else. They have an especially nice selection of seeds for moon gardens (white and light-colored flowers and foliage, and many night bloomers). Their website is www.selectseeds.com. Wildseed Farms is one of my favorite seed suppliers. It carries not only prairie-type grasses and wildflowers, but several of the cultivated varieties of flowers that grow so well in our climate. In their 2008 Wildflower Reference Guide and Seed Catalog (which arrived last week), for example, they have 10 varieties of zinnias, 10 varieties of hybrid sunflowers, and 14 varieties of cosmos, including the dwarf Ladybird line. They also carry a few herbs, and many, many "wildflowers" including yarrow, winecup, lance-leaved coreopsis, sweet alyssum, sweet william, red corn poppy, larkspur, purple coneflower, Mexican hat, Laura Bush Petunia (the only petunias I've ever grown that are able to keep blooming even when the temperatures start exceeding 100 degrees), clasping coneflower, butterfly weed, Texas bluebonnet, Indian paintbrush, and Alamo Fire (red-flowered) bluebonnet. They also have "wildflower mixes" that include a Texas/Oklahoma Wildflower Mix, a butterfly/hummingbird blend, a cut flower mix, and a pack of poppies mix. Another good source for native-type flowers that will thrive in our climate is Seeds of Change. Among other things, they have some really gorgeous amaranths and sunflowers. Their website is www.seedsofchange.com. Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsavers.org) offers a public catalog that offers a nice selection of heirloom flowers. If you join their organization (for which their is an annual fee) you have access, via their membership, to many, many other varieties of heirloom flowers, some of which are quite rare and obscure. Two of the major players in the seed catalog world are Burpee and Park Seed, which can be accessed via www.burpee.com and www.parkseed.com. They invest big dollars in breeding new plants and each one offers many of the common varieties of annuals and perennials as well as their own exclusive varieties. They are, however, more expensive than most other suppliers. They do, however, always offer "new and improved" varieties virtually every year, and some of them are quite successful. (New hybrid varieties, even AAS winners, have a surprisingly short life in the commercial seed world.....very few stick around for more than a handful of years.) Pinetree Garden Seeds (www.superseeds.com) offers smaller seed packets at smaller prices, which can make it easy to try a larger variety of flowers. Their service is top-notch too. Johnny's Selected Seeds (www.johnnnyseeds.com) offers a huge variety of seeds, although they seem to be more of a vegetable seed company. Their products are top quality. They do breed some of their own veggies, but I can't remember if they breed their own flower seeds as well. If you are interested in plants that are more rare and obscure, including many natives, J. L. Hudson, Seedman, is a small operation out of Californaia that offers a huge variety of seeds of hard-to-find plants. His website is www.jlhudsonseeds.net. Horticultural Products and Services is based in Randolph, Wisconsin, along with Totally Tomatoes and Vermont Bean Seed Company (I think they are all owned by the same company). You can visit it at www.hpsseed.com. They offer an amazing variety of bedding-type flowers and always seem to be among the first to have the newest varieties on the market. For example, in the catalog that arrived last week, they have the new Zahara line of zinnias (in Coral Rose, Scarlet, White, Yellow and a Mix) which just happened to be chosen for some of the landscaping at the 2008 Olympics. Other "new" seeds they are offering in the 2008-2009 HPS Catalog include The Toucan Hybrid series of Portulaca, Ruellia Southern Star Series (hybrid dward Mexican petunias), Profusion Zinnias new knee-high varieties, which are about a 8"to 12" taller than the originial Profusion Zinnia line, and a new Hollyhock, Blackberry Ripple. I often find out from their catalog what the new AAS winners are. One of the 2009 winners in their new catalog is an eggplant called Gretel that produces long, glossy, white-skinned eggplants that are only 3" to 4" long, and I bet it would you great tucked into a border of flowers! This firm does sell seeds of perennial flowers, herbs and veggies too. Thompson and Morgan is a British company with a branch here in the U.S. They offer an amazing array of seeds in their catalog and often have varieties seldom seen elsewhere. They also offer seeds of some trees, like mimosa and banana. Their website is www.tmseeds.com. I could go on forever, but I'll stop now so others can list their favorite seed catalogs as well. All of these firms offer both full-service websites and print catalogs, as far as I know. Well, I'm not certain if J.L. Hudson still has a catalog/pricelist or if he just has a website at this point. Most of them have places on their website where you can fill in a few lines and request a hard copy of the catalog.