WHEN YOU TURN ON THE CD-ROM "Perfect Plants" you are greeted by the talking head of Roger Phillips, telling you "this new medium can bring to gardeners exciting new ways to learn about plants." He is so appealing with his fuzzy gray beard and well-worn safari hat that you believe him. And, in fact, his CD-ROM is one of the best of its kind.

Gardeners seem to be deluged with new options in technology, and Phillips is right: They hold much promise. Most of the CD-ROMs have a feature that lets you specify your garden situation (steep slope in zone 8, dry shade in zone 7), or list selected criteria (a ground cover for sun with pink flowers in summer) and receive a custom list of plants. Sounds great, but the information is only as good as the person putting it in. All too often you get back a list of three plants you've known about since you were a kid. The makers of these programs are not yet sophisticated enough horticulturally to tempt me to spend my money on most of what they are producing.

"Perfect Plants" was created by knowledgeable plantsmen, so it does include a great number of interesting and even unusual plants. The photographs are stunning, the information detailed and accurate. As you browse through color close-up photos of hundreds of plants, you can choose music to accompany your slide show - fusion rapture, low-down blues, West Coast jazz or Bach. You can mess around with this lively and colorful CD-ROM for hours.

Why, if you aren't a techno-junkie, would you go for a CD-ROM over the tried-and-true, if dirty from being dragged around the garden, Sunset Western Garden Book? Unique to the CD of the same name is a "plant selector" feature where you first enter your ZIP code to establish your climate zone, then give criteria for your special garden situation. You can create your own garden notebook and print out shopping lists. Most helpful for those like me who are challenged by Latin pronunciations is the feature that actually speaks the name of the plant correctly.

"Sierra Complete Land Designer" is a 3-D design program that uniquely allows you to scan in a photo or video of your own garden, then choose plants and drop them into your own plan. It has shadow-casting technology to show the impact of a tree, and can track the costs and materials involved in your design. You can see how your landscape will look next summer, or in 20 years - a frightening thought! I have to admit I have used this only with the examples provided, too daunted by what is involved in putting in all the information about my own garden. Somehow the little wizards that prompt you through setting up the templates haven't reassured me sufficiently.

Most useful of all is a Web subscription service that I became hooked on the first week I tried it. For $39.95 a year, "Plant Information Online" gives you mail-order sources for more than 60,000 seeds, plants and bulbs, providing a direct link to nursery Web pages. Here's how it works: Simply enter a plant's genus and species name (you can also search by common name), and you learn not only where to buy the plant but also what references to it you can find in books and journals. The service is updated often, and even current magazines are indexed.

To find out more about these CD-ROMs, as well as what is available on the Internet, take a look at "The Gardener's Computer Companion" by Bob Boufford (San Francisco, No Starch Press, 1998, $39.95).

Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian and writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com

Now in Bloom: Winter-blooming iris, I. unguicularis, can be slow to establish, but after a year or two it produces blue flowers from early January through March, nestled amidst upright blades of evergreen foliage.