8/00-30 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information contact: Christine Kelleher, 800-232-9557, Ext. 512 or Gary Doerr, 916-716-1889 Lorraine Flanigan is a freelance garden writer living in Toronto. She is contributing editor for suite101.com's Gardening in Southern Ontario web site and her City Gardening column appears in Toronto's Town Crier newspaper. Feel free to use this release in its entirety or in part, with or without the author's byline.

As we chatted over the back fence about the weather and our plans for the day, I glanced at my neighbour's flower-filled garden, then at my own. Her's looked picture-perfect, as if it had sprung from the pages of Martha Stewart Living. Mine could have made the front page of a newspaper, telling of a war-torn, country laid waste by foot soldiers and tanks.

I sighed and thought of the plants I had bought earlier in the summer at the corner grocery store. Their tags promised large clumps of Daisies and Black-Eyed Susans and emerald carpets studded with delicate, star-shaped flowers. Although I had allowed plenty of space for the large clumps of Daisies and Black-Eyed Susans, they were lost and alone, with only a well-worn scatter rug at their feet instead of the star-studded, emerald carpet I had envisioned.

"Where did I go wrong?" I asked my green-thumb neighbour. I expected her to tell me that I had used the wrong fertilizer or hadn't watered enough or that insects were eating the roots, stunting their growth. But instead she said, "Good gardens start with good soil and good plants."

Inviting me to her garden, she showed me the rich, dark earth in her flower borders - "friable" she called it, as she crumbled the loose soil in her hands. "Where do you buy this great soil?" I asked. She pointed to a composter at the back of the yard, explaining that each year she adds the well-rotted kitchen scraps and garden wastes to her flowerbeds. "That and a deep mulch of leaves in the fall keeps my garden soil in good tilth," she said. (Tilth, huh? I made a mental note to look it up.)

Over the next few weeks, with the help of my neighbour, I worked on improving the soil in my garden. Finally, smug in the knowledge that my soil was in perfect tilth, it was time to go shopping for plants. "There's a sale at the garden centre down the road. Should we go there first?" Handing me a well-thumbed catalogue, my neighbour announced that she was taking me to her favourite nursery. "It's a bit of a drive, but these people take good care of their plants. If they don't do well in my garden, I know that I've done something wrong, not the nursery."

When we arrived, I walked down the aisles filled with potted plants. "How about this one with azure blue flowers?" She held up a perennial from another shelf and said, "If you plant this one instead, its bronze foliage will add colour to the garden after the flowers finish blooming."

As we continued to select plants, I noticed that my neighbour paid as much attention to the condition of the plant as she did to the label, rejecting plants with slightly yellowing leaves in favour of those with good, green colour and sturdy, bushy stems and branches.

By the end of the morning, we had the makings of a stunning flower border. After helping me plant the perennials, my neighbour walked back to her garden. Just in time, I stopped myself from asking how soon my garden would look like hers. Instead, I nodded sagely and said, "Good gardens grow in good time." In reply, she turned and gave me a green thumbs-up over the garden fence.

Blooms of Bressingham, growing good plants for good gardens.