This week’s show begins with a review of favorite seed catalogs and some of the interesting varieties offered for the coming growing season. These include comments about Baker’s Heirloom Seeds, Johnny’s Selected Seeds and Thompson & Morgan, a company that sold seeds to Charles Darwin. Learn about the benefits of growing the highly productive ‘Trombone’ zucchini squash, the ‘Tigger’ perfumed melon that tastes like an Asian pear, and the award-winning ‘Bright Lights’ chard which produces 11 stalk colors as a result of breeding work conducted by a New Zealander. Our expert this broadcast is Alex Pearl, founder of America in Bloom, an organization that makes awards to villages, towns and cities that have used their imagination in landscaping public spaces and beautification similar to the old established Britain in Bloom award program and the French Villes Fleuris. Among our emails we recommend some fast growing trees to turn a bare lot into a wooded lot, and also produce advice about planting hardy lilies.