Planting of certain flowers can begin

Plant cool season annuals, such as pansies and primulas, that can tolerate a light frost now to add color to your garden. These annuals can be used as under plantings to bulbs, complementing their flowers and carrying color over until summer annuals are planted in mid-to-late May.

Choose plants that are well-developed with lots of flowers and buds. The cool season annuals do not have much time to develop after planting.

The early cold weather has delayed the planting date for these flowers this year. It is a good idea to ask the garden center you are purchasing the plants from whether they have acclimated the plants to being outside, as these cool season annuals will be more prone to cold damage if they have just come out of a greenhouse.

• Install support for perennials that require staking in early spring as they begin to grow. It is best to install support systems before the plants actually need support and let them grow up through the support system.

• After a long Chicago winter, it is easy to let spring fever take over when ordering plants from catalogs and buying plants from garden centers. Take the time to select plants that are suited to your garden's growing conditions and fulfill your design criteria to ensure a successful garden.

The amount of sun and shade that your planting site has is an important basic criterion to use in plant selection. Putting the right plant in the right location will result in a better-looking garden that requires less maintenance.

• Use an electric hand grinder to sharpen your spades. Wear ear and eye protection while doing this work, as it will be very noisy with sparks flying off the spade as you sharpen it.

Keeping the spades sharp will make gardening much easier. New spades do not come with a sharp edge.

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