The variety of plants available has increased over the past five years.

By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
IGHT AFTER PEOPLE GET PAST THE DAY set aside to honor Mom is when business at area garden centers really starts to blossom.
"We're booming," said Tim Parks of Parks Garden Center, state Route 62.
People used to wait until after Memorial Day to start their summer planting, but that's moved up to after Mother's Day in recent years, he said.
Parks encourages customers to watch the weather forecasts for a string of nice days during which to plant their purchases.
There were some people who were overly optimistic with the warm, sunny weather of a few weeks ago and may have planted early.
Most popular item
Hanging baskets are the most popular item Mother's Day week, and they come in a wide variety from ivy geraniums to mini petunias, New Guinea impatiens and combinations thereof.
"In the last five years, there's been a real upswing in container planting," Parks said.
He attributed it to the varying plants available due to breeding achieved through vegetative production, or by plant cuttings rather than from seed.
While wave petunias are a variety bred from seed, supertunias are done from cuttings, Parks said. They maintain their blooms longer.
They want that
"Good gardeners recognize that and they say, 'That's what we want,'" he said. "These are self-cleaning plants. You don't have to pick at them and they bloom all summer."
Blanket petunias are another example of plant bred from cuttings.
"It's the most aggressive petunia I've ever grown," Parks said.
Their trail can be anywhere from two to four feet from their pots.
Ray Mashorda, owner of County Gardens Inc., Mahoning Avenue, Austintown, said hanging baskets are his biggest seller this time of year as well.
His father started the buy-one, get-one-free sale on 10-inch hanging baskets 30 years ago and Mashorda continues it.
The sale runs through June, but about half of the 40,000 to 45,000 baskets sold per season, are sold during the nine days leading up to Mother's Day.
What they have
"We have everything from million bells, ivy geraniums, New Guinea impatiens, nonstop begonias and fuschia baskets and even our Boston ferns," Mashorda said. "We have over 20 varieties of them, and these are some of the high-end flowers."
Parks said a lot of well-educated gardeners are knowledgeable about the wide diversity of flowers available.
"There's a lot of good varieties of plants out there," Parks said. "It's not just pansies, marigolds and regular petunias any more."