Does the gardening world really need another variety of salvia or petunia? Another zinnia? You decide. Visit the National Garden Bureau’s Web site, www.ngb.org, to view new varieties of garden flowers, including annuals, biennials and perennials, available for next spring.

A not-for-profit organization of growers, the NGB works to educate the gardening public about growing flowers and vegetables from seed. This is done primarily through its Web site, a valuable resource filled with gardening tips and beautiful photographs of 47 new varieties, along with the name of the company that is releasing each variety.

A new foxglove grabbed my attention because of its upward-facing flowers. You can look into the rosy pink throats of ‘Candy Mountain’ blooms as they open on steeple-shaped spikes. I can see a drift of this hardy biennial flowing through the sunny border, the 4-foot-tall plants creating a riot of color from June through August.

For the cutting garden, Park Seed Co. is introducing a new gerber daisy, ‘Crush Mix,’ with large 4-inch semidouble blooms in a mix of watermelon, rose and pink shades. The 12-inch-tall plants are easy to grow in containers or garden beds.

I like to scatter throughout the garden large pots planted with annuals of strong foliage character. Next summer I may try a new hibiscus, ‘Garden Leader Gro Big Red,’ a 5-foot-tall tropical-looking plant with deep red leaves. It is easy to grow, but strictly a foliage plant in our short season; down South it bears 3-inch burgundy red blooms. I suspect that by the time it reaches the garden center bench, we will call it simply “Big Red.”

Or perhaps I will have a pot of maize ‘Garden Leader Rainbow,’ an ornamental corn with tricolor foliage of red, cream and green on upright stalks 48 inches tall. The plants start green but begin to show their colors within three weeks under full sun. In autumn the parchment-colored stalks bear small ears of multicolor corn.

Pots of pansies are a staple in Marjorie’s garden and next year there will be a host of new varieties from which to choose, including the Cello series, named for their solidly upright habit and short flower stems. Plants of Antique Shades, one of 22 colors in the series, bear flowers of antique pink with yellow flush.

Pansy ‘Midnight Sun’ has dark-petaled 3- to 5-inch caps with sunny yellow whiskered faces. The variety ‘Matrix Morpheus,’ my favorite, bears flowers with vibrant blue caps and yellow lower petals whiskered in dark blue.

My favorite among the new perennial varieties is Russian sage ‘Taiga,’ the first Perovskia that flowers the first year from seed. Upright plants bear 3-foot-tall spikes of sky-blue flowers. An outstanding perennial for full sun, this variety is considered hardy in USDA Zone 5.

While you are there, check out zinnia ‘Solcito’ with its small golden blossoms, perfect for use in the mixed border. Perhaps there is something new under the sun.

As winter closes in, spend evenings by the wood stove looking in mail-order gardening catalogs for the plants or seeds of these new varieties. And as the new garden season approaches, look for plants of these new varieties at your favorite garden centers.

Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605, or to rmanley@ptc-me.net. Include name, address and telephone number.