Walk into Horsford Gardens this year and you’ll be greeted by our new front yard. We’ve expanded the display garden by the locust trees and added an area for seasonal displays. Displays will feature plants in bloom as well as groupings of plants that grow well together. We’re thinking of theme gardens such as butterfly attractors, moon gardens, fragrant combinations and, of course, Hummingbird plants.

We removed miles of benches used to display over 700 varieties of perennials for sale. Alphabetized from Acanthus to Viola (Zinnia is an annual . . .), we used to carefully allocate 7 pots worth of bench space to each variety, and then daily re-stock whatever had sold from our perennial farm growing area.

This year, we’re inviting all of our perennial customers (and you know who you are) to shop at the source. In our perennial farm, a short stroll from the garden shop, you’ll find rows and rows of perennial delights, as well as a few hidden treasures. If it’s huge, threeyear- old plants you’re after, this is the spot to search. If shade is your blessing (or curse, depending on your viewpoint), we have nearly three hundred feet of shade now covering the last two rows of perennials. Our woodland plants - wildflowers, as well as ferns, have never looked better. Whatever your favorite’s are, you’re bound to find some here.

Our familiar staff of growers will be snipping, watering, petting, and nurturing the crops. But instead of seven plants to choose from, you’ll have hundreds. And if it’s advice you’re after, you’ll find 110 years of garden experience waiting to be handed out. You’ll find our growers armed with charts and maps and red wagons, ready and willing to assist in your plant hunting mission.

While you’re out venturing, carefully look over our display gardens. Notice the new ones added since abandoning the benches. Everyone is invited to wander the grounds, which now cover more than forty acres. Two new maps, which you’ll find inside the catalog, will guide you to each of our display gardens as well as trails leading to the far reaches of our growing fields where you’ll find fields of lilacs, flowering trees, shade trees and evergreens. Our goal is to share our love of plants and gardening with everyone who’s interested, and we open our grounds to make that possible.