Botanic Garden offers resources to help with plant selection

Selecting the right plant that is well-suited to your garden's growing conditions and fulfills your design goals is an important first step toward having a successful garden.

Order seed, bulb and nursery catalogs to assist in planning your garden for the 2016 growing season.

To help you choose the best plants for your garden, take advantage of the of the Chicago Botanic Garden's website, as well as its Plant Information Service, Lenhardt Library, and the Joseph Regenstein Jr. School.

• Cyclamen plants will continue to bloom for a few weeks if they are kept in a north window in a cool room (55 to 60 degrees) and watered enough to keep the soil evenly moist, never soggy. Avoid splashing the crown of the plant or the foliage, as this can promote diseases. Remove fading flowers and their stems as needed. Most gardeners find it too difficult to force the plant to bloom again the following season.

Take the following steps if you would like to try to get your cyclamen to bloom again next year. As the foliage and flowers begin to fade, withhold water. Remove all dead foliage from the tuber, clean off the soil and store the tuber in peat moss or vermiculite in a dark, cool (50 degrees) spot for its dormant period. Later in spring or summer, check the tuber for new growth. As soon as growth begins, repot the tuber with its top half exposed and bottom half buried in a fresh, soilless mix. Resume normal watering and fertilize with a dilute 10-10-10 or 15-15-15 mix twice a month.

Cyclamen benefits from summers spent outside in a protected spot in the garden where it receives morning sun. Bring the plant indoors before autumn frost.

• Tim Johnson is director of horticulture at Chicago Botanic Garden, chicagobotanic.org.