2/00-03 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information contact: Christine Kelleher, 800-232-9557, Ext. 512 or Gary Doerr, 916-716-1889 This is one in a periodic series of articles by respected garden writers throughout North America. You can expect others on topics of similar interest on a timely basis. Feel free to use this release in its entirety or in part, with or without the author's byline. Janet Macunovich is a professional garden designer and writer from southeast Michigan. Her articles appear weekly in the Detroit News. She has written two books, "Easy Garden Design" and "Caring for Perennials" and has had articles in numerous horticultural publications.

Somewhere, every day of the year is a gardening day.

Am I glad I don't live there!

Gardeners need winter, if only to sort out the year's clutter. Simplest to make these plans while the plants are lying quietly -- no sniveling, whining, grandstanding, or rough-housing to distract you.

What, your perennials don't behave this way? No plant that demands far more attention than it's worth? No dog that's escaped the ax only because it entered its one minute of glory for the season just as you approached to dig it out? No plants trying to shove every other species out of the way and claim a whole bed for themselves?

Ah ha. You do know what I mean. Act now to take control !

Here's a simple process for doing what has to be done.

First, look at the bed. Reshape it or resize it as needed. You should like the bed for itself, even without flowers. You don't have to do the work now, but do sketch out the desired change or mark it in the ground.

Now inventory your plants. Don't bother with locations or quantities, just names. Whatever it is, it can be moved. If there isn't enough to fill out the dream garden you're going to design, it can be divided.

Now, it's time to be hard hearted. Reduce the list to true gems - those you remember for more than their flower. These enduring presences have beautiful bloom and are also fine in form, leaf color or texture the rest of the year.

A few plants aren't quite true gems but they're keepers. Call them "good friends." Thrilling in bloom, they either remain respectable afterward or are quick to disappear.

Throw out the rest. You don't need unreformable slackers, slouchers, and sadsacks. Nor should you keep over-willing types that tangle with neighbors, sneak around underground, sprawl, self-sow prolifically, or otherwise make nuisances of themselves. Unless, of course, you have an acre or two to give each one!

Now, arrange what's left into groups, spaced at graceful intervals through the bed. Anchor each group with a true gem or two - one plant or a cluster of one type, depending on how much mass you need. Add two or three good friends with contrasting foliage and heights.

Now here's the most fun. Use the rest of the off-season to find new recruits to fill the gaps. Keep in mind that you don't want to get your beds back into a muddle any sooner than you need to, so be discriminating. Seek out true gems.

That's where great plantsmen come in, men and women who select and produce great plants for us. Bloom's of Bressingham North America has a fine line of gems to draw from.

I can suggest:

In the half shade:

Heuchera 'Bressingham Bronze' with purple-green foliage so attractive, the off-white flowers in June are a bonus.

Astilbe 'Sprite', ferny and bronze green, with champagne-pink flowers that come again if deadheaded.

Geranium xoxonianum 'Bressingham's Delight' a neat mound of dark green foliage covered with light pink flowers beginning in May and June.

Polemonium 'Brise D'Anjou' has flowers in May that are sweetly blue-violet but which are secondary to the variegated foliage, exquisitely edged in creamy white and attractive all summer.

In the sun:

Achillea 'Anthea' offers ferny gray-green foliage plus flat-topped light yellow flowers in June that repeat into September if kept cut.

Helenium 'Coppelia' features a sturdy three-foot column of clean foliage that lets loose a blaze of coppery orange flowers in fall.

Hemerocallis 'Miss Amelia' whose pale yellow blooms come early and fragrant, repeat later in summer, and stay open into evening so I can see them without taking a day off work.

Heliopsis 'Loraine Sunshine'. False sunflower is a workhorse, bright with yellow daisies from mid-June into August. This variety has an extra attraction - variegated foliage, white with green veins.

Persicaria 'Dimity'. Pink flower spikes most of the summer. A great edger, always respectable and the foliage goes chocolate brown in winter.