Make Gardening Season a Breeze with a Visit to Your Local Real Canadian Superstore®

Real Canadian Superstore® locations offer customers plants and flowers sourced 100 per cent from Canadian growers

BRAMPTON, ON, May 7, 2014 /CNW/ - (TSX:L)  – Need brilliant flowering baskets, gorgeous blooms, edible plants, and stunning designer planters to get your garden looking picture perfect this spring? Look no further than the outdoor Garden Centres at your local grocery stores like Loblaws^®, Real Canadian Superstore^®, Your Independent Grocer^®, Fortinos^®, Atlantic Superstore^®, Zehrs^® and valu-mart^® locations.

"My team and I travel the world to bring the hottest new gardening trends and exciting product innovations to our customers and I can't wait to see their reactions when they find out what we have come up with for this year," says Peter Cantley, garden guru and vice-president, Floral & Garden, Loblaw Companies Limited. "We have many exclusive products they won't find elsewhere in Canada and we're proud that 100 per cent of our non-tropical outdoor plants and flowers are sourced from Canadian growers."

The President's Choice^® 2014 Garden Book, available in Loblaw banner stores, is the perfect guide to cultivating a lush and bountiful garden this season. Learn more about our great lawn and garden products at mypcgarden.ca and join the conversation using the hashtag #pcgarden.

In the meantime, here are some of the spring garden trends from Peter.

Planting and cooking an edible garden

Growing produce is an incredibly rewarding way for people to reap the results of the work they do in the garden and it's easier than most people think. Growing herbs and leafy greens can be as simple as choosing where to place the pot, then watering.

The PC^® Grafted Greek Basil Tree serves equally well as a source of aromatic herbs and a conversation piece. Shaped like a mini tree, this unique plant can be brought inside in the fall since it keeps growing and yielding basil year after year. It's just one example of why the popularity of grafted plants is taking off; the PC^® Mighty 'Mato^® Grafted Indigo Rose Tomato is another, with its astonishing and delicious purple-black fruits.

Non-traditional vegetables also provide home-made dishes with mouth-watering flavour. PC^® Gigantico Ghost Chili Peppers are among the hottest peppers in the world and are guaranteed to fire up salsa or create incendiary burgers. They pack a severe punch and should be handled with gloves! Asian stir-fry staples include PC^® Gigantico Napa Cabbage, a crunchy substitute for celery, and PC^® Gigantico Bitter Melon, an Asian gourd whose flavour resembles that of cucumber.

Creating outdoor rooms with plants and flowers

With warmer weather around the corner, Canadians flock to backyards and patios for outdoor entertaining. "Flowers and plants are an effective way to make outdoor living spaces more welcoming," says Peter. "Patios and balconies without plants feel barren and cold but with some simple gardening and decorating techniques, it's easy to liven up spaces to create outdoor rooms."

PC^® Fiberglass Pots come in a range of sizes and styles to complement a deck or patio whether it has a contemporary or rustic feel. Styles include modern black and white and a timeless French country design. After a brutally cold winter, traditional clay pots are probably showing signs of wear. Unlike many clay pots which shatter or peel away in cold weather, PC^® Frost Proof Clay Pots are specially engineered to stay strong and intact throughout the harshest Canadian winters.

Hanging baskets bursting with annuals like PC^® Gigantico Jumbo Baskets add a shock of colour to turn a naked deck into a brilliant spring spectacle. Newly designed baskets hold more soil which means a bigger root ball and a stronger plant.

Adding dimension with grasses

Grasses are a sure-fire way to add sound, motion and texture to a garden. To meet the growing demand for grasses and fescues, many new varieties are now available.

PC^® Panicum Northwind Switch Grass is a showy beauty with rigid, upright stalks that turn yellow in autumn. Back by popular demand is the PC^® Miscanthus Gold Bar which adds dimension to a garden with its tiger pattern of horizontally banded yellow and green blades—it also makes a great addition to a patio when planted in a pot.

Making a garden pop with more colourful plants than ever

Customers are always looking for the most colourful flowers. Special steps were taken with this year's flower line-up to deliver on these demands. Super-colourful flower varieties were selected, placed in extra-large 12" pots and given more time in the greenhouse to nurture their vibrant hues.

The new and exclusive PC® Gigantico^® Dahlia 'XXL Aztec Sunset' is adorned with petals that erupt in the centre with vibrant yellow and explode in colours of the sunset at their tips. This unspeakable beauty grows to an astounding 24 inches and is sure to be a hot seller.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
In 2008, Loblaw introduced Canada's first and only national recycling program for gardeners. Exclusive to Loblaw banner stores, gardeners across the country can drop off their used plastic pots and flats which are not accepted by municipal recycling programs. The plastic products are then recycled to create new pots and flats for the next season. Gardeners can also return used pots and flats purchased at any garden centre to Loblaw stores and receive a $5 coupon* for a minimum of 25 pots or flats returned, to be redeemed when they spend a minimum of $50 on gardening products from the outdoor Garden Centres.

Through this unique program more than 5.6 million pounds of plastic flower pots and flats have been diverted from landfill since 2008. To learn more about Loblaw's commitment to corporate social responsibility visit www.loblaw-reports.ca.  

*Coupon valid from May 10 – June 29, 2014.  Coupons can be found at cash registers of participating Garden Centres.

President's Choice^® products are available at Loblaws^®, Zehrs Markets^®, Fortinos^®, Real Canadian Superstore^®, Atlantic Superstore^®, Your Independent Grocer^®, valu-mart^®, SaveEasy^®, and Extra Foods^® banner stores and more. Product pricing and availability may vary by banner and region.

About Loblaw Companies Limited

Loblaw Companies Limited is Canada's food and pharmacy leader, the nation's largest retailer, and the majority unitholder of Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust. Loblaw provides Canadians with grocery, pharmacy, health and beauty, apparel, general merchandise, banking, and wireless mobile products and services. With more than 2,300 corporate, franchised and Associate-owned locations, Loblaw, its franchisees, and Associate-owners employ approximately 192,000 full- and part-time employees, making it one of Canada's largest private sector employers.

Loblaw's purpose – Live Life Well – puts first the needs and well-being of Canadians who make one billion transactions annually in the companies' stores. Loblaw is positioned to meet and exceed those needs in many ways: convenient locations; more than 1,050 grocery stores that span the value spectrum from discount to specialty; full-service pharmacies at more than 1,250 Shoppers Drug Mart^® and Pharmaprix^® locations and more than 500 Loblaw locations PC Financial^® no-fee banking; affordable Joe Fresh^® fashion and family apparel; and three of Canada's top consumer brands in Life Brand^®, no name^® and President's Choice^®. Through the PC Plus™ and Shoppers Optimum^® loyalty programs, more than one in every three Canadians are rewarded for shopping with the companies.

Product samples, regional versions of the President's Choice^® 2014 Garden Book and high-resolution images are available.

SOURCE: Loblaw Companies Limited

or to arrange an interview with Peter Cantley or a Loblaw grower, please contact: Loblaw Companies Limited, 905-459-2500/[email protected]