WEST CHICAGO, IL — With the unofficial start of summer just around the corner, gardeners across the country will spend Memorial Day weekend digging in and planting summer staples ranging from vegetable gardens to flower containers. As gardeners dust off their trowels and shake out their gloves, Burpee Home Gardens® is helping gardeners succeed by bringing technology into the garden.
Choosing your plants
One big challenge for gardeners is knowing what plants to grow together. Burpee Home Gardens is easing this worry by helping gardeners pick varieties that not only look great together but are guaranteed to grow well together throughout the season.
New this spring, the My Garden Designer mobile design tool helps novice gardeners plan and plant creative flower gardens. It is designed to take the guesswork out of flower color, height and compatibility, creating "recipes" for easily planted containers or flowerbeds.
Gardeners can start from scratch by selecting a garden location, size and theme, and then select colors for spiller, filler and thriller varieties to receive several garden designs. Users also can create a design around a favorite plant and choose the retail locator to find the variety at a local garden center.
To date, gardeners have created more than 3,000 different container ideas, with 75 percent of designs made for sun locations and 25 percent made for shade locations. Also, 56 percent of gardeners used My Garden Designer to create a plan for a garden larger than six feet, while 52 percent of gardeners used it to plant a midsized container of 16 to 24 inches.
When the real work (and fun) begins
Whether gardeners need to find a quick answer to a question or are simply looking for inspiration, Burpee Garden Coach, a free mobile Web tool, can help gardeners succeed and reap the benefits of a well-tended garden. This handy, text-enabled program provides plant information, weather updates, common gardening solutions and recipes throughout the season.
Users can customize their profile to receive tips on flower gardening, vegetable gardening, or both, either via text message or email alerts. Garden Coach also features a garden library full of frequently asked questions and educational podcasts by garden expert Joe Lamp'l. Gardeners can sign up by texting their ZIP code to 80998 or visiting gdncoach.mobi.
Gardeners get a lot of help from their friends, family and neighbors. Following this trend, Burpee has created a "backyard" to help bring people together in a new digital neighborhood. Burpee's Backyard online community provides a forum for gardeners to talk about shared gardening experiences –be it a stubborn weed or favorite variety of tomato. Gardeners with varying levels of expertise can engage in discussions with like-minded gardeners and information experts, and even browse online resources to help find answers to common gardening questions.
Gardeners can find more information on the Burpee Home Gardens website, www.burpeehomegardens.com, and can stay connected by following Burpee Home Gardens' Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest pages.
ABOUT BURPEE HOME GARDENS®: Burpee Home Gardens is a program of garden-ready vegetables, herbs and flowers available nationally at retail garden centers. Backed by the 136-year history of Burpee, the first name in home gardening, Burpee Home Gardens provides gardeners with time-tested varieties and information, ideas and inspiration for success. For more information, visit burpeehomegardens.com.
ABOUT BURPEE: Burpee was founded in 1876 by seed pioneer W. Atlee Burpee. The company remains privately owned by George Ball, a third-generation seedsman, who serves as chairman of W. Atlee Burpee & Co. and is past president of The American Horticultural Society. Today, Burpee is the largest, most progressive garden company in North America offering seeds, garden plants and gardening supplies through the company website (www.burpee.com), direct-mail catalogs, and via retail garden centers nationwide. Burpee offers both heirloom and hybrid varieties, and is credited for introducing the world to numerous ornamental and edible breakthrough varieties during its 136-year history. Burpee's headquarters, display gardens and research farm are located in historic Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Source: Burpee