YOU CAN LEARN to design an outdoor room or grow and enjoy lingonberries and medlar fruit at the 15th annual Garden Symposium, to be held at the Farm and Home Center, Saturday, March 17. Cost is $52, which includes a continental breakfast and catered lunch.

It all beings at 8 a.m., followed by an array of speakers at 8:45, introduced by moderator Shirley Wagner. Kerry Mendez's tips for jump-starting your spring garden open the program. Owner of Perennially Yours, Mendez teaches people of all ages the art of low-maintenance perennial gardening. She focuses on timesaving gardening techniques, using workhorse plants and organic practices.

After a break, Joanne Kostecky will show and tell how to create an outdoor living room. She is in her first term as the first woman president of the American Nursery and Landscape Association. She heads Joanne Kostecky Garden Design in the Philadelphia area.

Mendez will speak again before lunch, introducing new eye-popping perennials.

The first speaker after lunch is Lee Reich, longtime professor at Cornell University before his retirement. He will talk about unusual fruits you should be growing in your backyard. You may have read some of his numerous articles, since he writes for national garden publications.

Following Reich, Kent Russell will talk about fantastic foliage. Raised in a family nursery business, Russell's current passion is designing container gardens.

Wagner will conclude the meeting, scheduled to end before 4 p.m. with a drawing for door prizes. Wagner is chair and co-creator of the garden symposium and coordinator of the master gardener program in Lancaster County.

Seating is limited, and registration will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. For a registration form, call the Lancaster County Extension Office, 394-6851, or e-mail Wagner at srw12@psu.edu. The symposium is held at the Farm and Home Center, 1383 Arcadia Road, Lancaster. Vendors selling garden products will be at the show.

Q. You give great advice in your New Era column. I love plants and have a sunroom with a Southern exposure, where most plants thrive in winter. Last summer, I purchased a Nepenthes Miranda (pitcher plant). I am keeping it out of direct sun but thoroughly watering it with rain or distilled water. I even mist it often. The plant looks great, has new leaves and looks healthy. But the new pitchers stay the same size. They have not grown since fall, when I brought it indoors. Can you tell me how to fertilize it to get the new pitchers to grow? — JANICE BRENEMAN, STEVENS

A. Growing pitcher plants and orchids requires patience and special skills that I've never acquired. But my pitcher-plant expert says they rarely like or want fertilizer. That is why they produce pitchers — to catch the nutrition they need from insects. Or yours could be a small-flowering form. More likely, it may need more sunlight or longer days for the pitchers to grow larger. Were the pitchers large when you bought the plant? You might want to take the plant back to where it was purchased and see if they can give you some answers.

GARDEN CUTTINGS

Although the snow created a lot of grief for many people, it is a wonderful insulator for plants. They're cozy under all that snow. It's much better than cold, gusty winds that can kill plants, especially roses.

Bob Stiffler is a freelance columnist whose column appears every Thursday. He lives in Willow Street. Send your gardening questions to: Bob Stiffler, c/o Your Life, P.O. Box 1328, Lancaster, PA 17608-1328. Letters are edited only for brevity and will be printed in the order received. For a faster reply, e-mail him at: rstiffler@dejazzd.com.