May / June 1996

The signs are everywhere these warm spring days. The garden centers are brimming, the clubs are holding their fund-raisers and even the guy down the street is likely to have a small sign out, trying to make a dollar or two on some overabundant perennials.

There is so much choice, the decision comes back to what we want to put in our gardens this season. Are petunias too pedestrian? Are perennials too difficult to establish and manage? Will something small and delicate get lost in a big space? Can we grow something outrageously large on a balcony?

We hope you will find guidance in this issue. We have intentionally focused on small spaces with our cover story on container gardening. There are two supporting stories: Pamela Wolfe's examination of soil mixes for containers and Carolyn Ulrich's profile of the Hyde Park Garden Fair where those six-packs sell like hotcakes.

Much of that package focuses on annual flowers, but the eternal question among gardeners always will center around annuals versus perennials. On the latter score, we visit the woodland wildflower garden of Virginia Umberger, a shady retreat that's at its peak in May. For those of you with more sun, Kate Jerome recommends some of her favorite prairie natives. And guest editorialist Joe Sable even informs us about a perennial sunflower.

If you are truly into gardening, you start to find small worlds of acquaintances. I've volunteered for Joe Sable virtually since he started at Cantigny, but I found out only recently that his college roommate was Stan Beikmann. Stan, former director of Fernwood Gardens in Michigan, appears in Carolyn Ulrich's profile of that splendid botanic garden. Stan and I have known each other for at least a decade and have served together on the board of directors of the Garden Writers Association of America since 1988. Stan is now the president of the 1,300-member group and I am the vice president.

Cantigny and the GWAA are volunteer commitments that provide a lot of personal contact-talking with visitors in Cantigny's Idea Garden on a weekend afternoon or attending the annual meeting of my peer group. The third part of my volunteerism is with the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service (always a mouthful) where I serve as a master gardener. This is my 11th year of holding that title, and it still amazes me how little I know about gardening compared to the vastness of the discipline. We started carrying some Extension material in the March/April issue, and in the July/August issue we will begin a regular feature written for us by Extension professionals.

The Extension Service has offices in every county in Illinois and their phone numbers are listed under the university in the phone book. We also carry a list of those help numbers on the flap of our subscription card which you can find between pages 58 and 59.

We hope you have a great growing season and as always, we're interested in your feedback.