You want beautiful plants in your home landscape. But you also want them to be strong, healthy and trouble-free. You want shrubs to have multi-season interest. You want trees to suit your needs, whether it be shade or ornamentation. You want perennials and annuals to have nice, pest-free foliage and a long period of blooms.

How do you find such plants? Let the experts pick 'em.

And the experts have.

For more than 70 years, the good folks at the All-America Selections have recommended top plants for home landscapes and vegetable gardens. The AAS was founded in 1932 by W. Ray Hastings, when he was president of the Southern Seedsmen's Association.

He proposed the idea of AAS as a way for home gardeners to learn which varieties were significantly improved. He encouraged all seed companies to begin trial grounds to test new varieties.

The current All-America Selections and previous years of award winners may be found at http://www.all- americaselections.org/

TheAAS winners for 2004 include:

• Celosia plumosa Fresh Look Red, which performs like a fresh floral arrangement all summer. Thriving in the summer heat and humidity with drought or rainy conditions, Fresh Look Red decorates a garden or patio container with rosy red plumes. It won the coveted Gold Medal for its consistent performance with minimal maintenance and pest-free growth. The plant, which gets 12 to 18 inches tall with central plumes of 8 to 10 inches, always looks fresh, needing no grooming. The flowers can be cut and dried for everlasting homemade bouquets.

• Celosia plumosa Fresh Look Yellow offers season-long garden color with minimal care. The golden yellow plumes are produced in abundance, at times covering the plant. It grows numerous side shoots, which cover mature blooms, eliminating the need for deadheading. Fresh Look Yellow, reaching a height of 12 to 17 inches, is perfect for busy gardeners who want summer-long flower color on carefree plants.

• Gypsophila Gypsy Deep Rose is an annual G. muralis with a large number of dainty, rose-like blooms over a long flowering season. It forms an enchanting mounded plant with a height of 8 to 10 inches, preferring full sun and is well-suited to containers. It is easily grown from seed or bedding plants and requires little maintenance.

• Hollyhock Queeny Purple is the shortest Alcea rosea and the first purple hollyhock available as a single color not part of a mixture. These unique traits combined with season-long flower color resulted in Queeny Purple winning an AAS Award. The frilly edged blooms are a "powder puff" type and measure 3 to 4 inches and are produced abundantly on the compact branching plants which reach a mature height of 20 to 30 inches, perfect for smaller space gardens. Queeny Purple is an annual that will flower prolifically the first year from a February or March sowing.

• Petunia F1 Limbo Violet features large flowers on a compact plant. The mounding annual is, at times, completely covered with blossoms. The ultimate plant size is only 6 to 7 inches tall, spreading 10 to 12 inches. At 3 inches or larger, Limbo Violet blooms are huge but recover quickly from severe weather. Plants are virtually maintenance-free, no pinching needed.

But AAS is not the only plant awards program designed to help the home gardener identify unbeatable plants. You'll also find excellent recommendations from the following:

• The Perennial Plant Association in Hilliard, Ohio, chooses a Perennial Plant of the Year each spring. Past winners include Russian sage, Phlox David, Heuchera Palace Purple and Coreopsis Moonbeam. The 2004 selection is Japanese Painted Fern. For the complete list, visit http://www.perennialplant.org/ppy/ppyindex.html

• Great Plant Picks is aimed at gardeners in the Pacific Northwest, but many of those plants can be easily grown in the Tri-State. There are 45 new plants for 2004 listed for trees and conifers, shrubs and vines, and perennials and bulbs. Check it out at http://www.greatplantpicks.org/

• The Georgia Native Plant Society chooses a native plant of the year. This year's is sourwood. The choice for 2003 was foamflower. For more information, visit http://www.gnps.org/PLANT24.HTM

• The Virginia Native Plant Society chooses a wildflower of the year. This year's plant has not yet been announced, but the winner for 2003 was the seashore mallow. For details, visit http://www.vnps.org/