What's in?

There's a breakthrough in coneflowers, a revolution in rocks, a new world order in hydrangeas and something shaking with the poppies.

It's a slightly loony time in the garden and home business. We're just days away from a raft of big garden shows across North America. Pronouncements are being made, trends touted.

"I think weaving is in now," says Lorne Hancock. Hancock, designer for Earth Inc. (www.goearthinc.com) of Toronto makes the prediction as he and his fellow "Inc-ers" gather around the garden they designed for the recent Toronto Interior Design Show. Earth Inc used to gobble up all kinds of awards at Canada Blooms but they recently moved their spring fling to the Interior Design show where their well focused urban gardens fit in seamlessly.

"I think mass planting is in, the uncluttered look, strong lines," says Hancock. The weaving he likes is represented by a fence around their display garden of woven strips of steel.

Elements from the garden popped up merrily in many of the design show displays. Rocks were everywhere, bundled up in cages to make tables, or plopped into mortar to form mosaic tiles. Kuda Furniture and Homewares (www.kudaimports.com) showed a line of ocean stone mosaic tiles perfect they say for bathrooms, kitchens and pathways.

They reminded me very much of a garden floor I saw a few years ago in Fergus. Smooth river rock was set by hand in screenings in a hardworking area of the backyard. There was a well used potting bench, a cleverly designed composting area and handsome storage sheds. The whole beautiful thing could have been uprooted and dropped into the Chelsea Garden Show, and likely won an award.

Or for that matter, transported to the Interior Design Show, given a catchy name and marketed to an upscale clientele.

With imagination the humblest things from the garden can be reinvented for the home.

Miriam Grenville is immortalizing the common red poppy on her non-conformist digital wallcoverings (grenvilledesign@hotmail.com). The big, lush poppies get the Georgia O'Keefe treatment in the most voluptuous way. They are teamed with polka dots and camouflage. "The inspiration was my three little boys," Grenville says. "They are G.I. Joe dudes, into camouflage. It's not an obvious combination, but it makes you smile."

If Grenville finds the poppy irresistible, wait until she wades into a garden planted out with the newest coneflower. Orange Meadowbrite is the first orange blooming coneflower ever produced in cultivation. Press releases are flying about this exciting new perennial, and pronouncements that it's the most exciting new thing to happen in horticulture in the last ten years.

Orange Meadowbrite is very pretty, with flower petals that flutter between orange and deep pink, like a rainbow sherbet. Dr. Jim Ault worked for seven years at the Chicago Botanic Garden (www.chicagobotanic.org)to breed this new introduction. It should be available in Canada this summer, though it may not arrive in nurseries until mid-summer. Orange Meadowbrite is making a long journey home from New Zealand where it is being tissue cultured.

Another plant about to waltz down the runway at the spring garden shows is Endless Summer hydrangea (www.endlesssummerblooms.com). It re-blooms, it's hardy to Zone 4, it has super-sized pink or blue flowers, depending on the soil and it deserves a column of its own. Home Depot has put in an order for 300 thousand.

Wait until the interior design people put their French manicures on this plant, it will be on wallpaper, plates, and pillows.