Your mailbox is bulging with seed catalogs trumpeting bigger, bolder, more improved varieties of petunias, corn, tomatoes and impatiens.
Park Seed has 21 pages of "the best of the new," offering tantalizing glimpses of six new European vegetables, two new sunflowers and three new vincas.
A dazzling close-up of "Rose Parade" double impatiens graces the cover of the W. Atlee Burpee's spring catalog.
Did you ever wonder where these new varieties that whet our gardening appetite come from?
Are the brains behind this beauty sitting in some university laboratory? Do the new varieties come from dedicated amateurs? Or are they produced on high-tech production lines?
It's a little of all of this.
One thing you can count on: "Virtually none of the large mail-order seed companies actually produce the product" you see in their catalogs, says Joe Seal, Burpee's director of production development.
"We work with hundreds of seed developers and growers around the world," says Michael McKinley, director of public relations for Park Seed. "We know what the public wants," Mr. McKinley says. "We work with people to come up with those things."
Burpee worked directly with a breeder to produce its new "SuperTasty" tomato. "We might tell a breeder a tomato needs to be bigger or tastier or rounder or redder," Mr. Seal says. "We say, 'We'll work with you, and when it's ready, we'll buy it from you.' "
Mr. Seal also talks with "certain key breeders who are trendsetters."
These are breeders "who are playing with the new stuff, looking for new stuff, breeding new stuff."
Only a handful of companies worldwide fit this description, says Klaus Neubner, executive vice president for production development at Park: "Two big Dutch companies, two or three Japanese and four American."
The average home gardener never hears about these behind-the-scene seed companies, which often play a major role in what we grow.
Yet PanAmerican Seed, with headquarters outside Chicago, developed such classics as the "Super Elfin" series of impatiens, the "Super Cascade" petunia series and "Better Boy" tomato.
A few new plants get to market the old-fashioned way, discovered in the wild by plant explorers. "Blue Angel" impatiens, Burpee's new blue species, was found by a plant explorer "in the Himalayas kicking around in the bush" about five years ago, Mr. Seals says. "He took it back. We grew it."
Last year's "African Queen" impatiens was also a plant explorer's find.
"Lakota" winter squash was raised for generations by the Sioux Indians. A seed company took it, "tweaked it to be a little more uniform. And it's a Burpee exclusive," Mr. Seal says. "This is an heirloom at its finest."
Fame and fortune may lie along quirkier paths for still other plants.
"Purple Wave" petunia, predicted to be the next garden superstar, was introduced by the Kirin Beer company in Japan. Kirin does genetic work with hops, barley and other beer ingredients.
One of company's researchers, a petunia aficionado in his spare time, took some of his genetic know-how and came up with "Purple Wave," very different from every petunia on the market. "Purple Wave" is a ground cover, forming a dense carpet of long-lasting flowers about 6 inches high. One plant will cover 3 or 4 square feet.
PanAmerican Seed bought exclusive rights to produce and market it in the United States.
Gardening seems so simple at times, but it is not immune from trends, Mr. McKinley says.
Avid gardeners now want European vegetables. Park is carrying seven, including an Italian paste tomato and eggplant.
However, "Park customers are not sold by trendy, yuppie gimmicks," Mr. McKinley quickly adds. For that reason, the vegetables are grouped together under the heading "the finer country kitchen."
Mr. McKinley stresses, "These are the best that people in Italy and France are eating, not what's being served in a fancy New York restaurant."
Antique flowers are also popular. Mr. Neubner says Park has resurrected old flowers like cosmos, single hollyhocks, sunflowers and daisies.
"The world changes so fast. Things become obsolete so fast. People want an anchor to hang onto, something solid, stable, unchanging," he says, chuckling.
"You almost have to employ a psychologist to understand this stuff."
A rule of thumb for any company is to introduce 10 to 15 percent new varieties each year and retire an equal number from the catalog, Mr. Seal says.
A few plants survive this constant turnover to become classics.
Of the 353 vegetable seeds and 432 flower seeds in the Burpee catalog, three vegetables -- including Burpee's original iceberg lettuce -- have been available for 100 years or longer. Fourteen have been sold at least 50 years.
Mail-order seed companies grow the seed they sell, whether a classic or the new entry, to make sure quality is maintained.
Park has 9 acres of trial gardens in Greenwood, S.C. "We grow every single variety of seed we put in the catalog every year," Mr. McKinley says.
That's 1,823 different flowers and vegetables.
That's a lot.
How to get some of the standard seed catalogs
* W. Burpee Atlee & Co., 300 Park Ave., Warminster, Pa. 18991-0001; (800) 888-1447.
* Gurney's Seed & Nursery Co., 110 Capital Street, Yankton, South Dakota 57079; (605) 665-1930.
* Henry Field's Seed & Nursery Co., 415 North Burnett, Shenandoah, Iowa 51602; (605) 665-9391.
* Johnny's Selected Seeds, Foss Hill Road, Albion, Maine 04910-9731; (207) 437-4301.
* J. W. Jung Seed & Nursery Co., 335 S. High St., Randolph, Wis. 53957-0001; (800) 247-5864.
* Park Seed, Cokesbury Road, Greenwood, S.C. 29647-0001; (800) 845-3369.
* Ronniger's Seed Potatoes, Star Route, Moyie Springs, Idaho 83845; (208) 267-7938.
* Shepherd's Garden Seeds, 30 Irene St., Torrington, Conn. 06790; (203) 482-3638.
* Territorial Seed Co., P.O. Box 157, Cottage Grove, Ore. 97424-0061; (503) 942-9547.
* Thompson & Morgan, P.O. Box 1308, Jackson, N.J. 08527-0308; (908) 363-2225.