resize lvm partition (NOT: resize logical volume)

How do I resize the lvm partition. And I don't mean resizing a physical volume, volume group or logical volume.

scenario
I had a lvm which spanned a whole disc with exception of a 100mb boot partition.

Now i wanted to add a legacy primary partition for a non linux OS (nice euphemism :P )

So I did:
- resize the ext3 partition with (g)parted
- resize the physical volume (because the volume group already had enough free extents)
and now?
The physical volume, in my case /dev/sda3 should have free extents, and it does shows this with
$pvs
!
Yet fdisk/parted does not show free space in my partition table.
Now some site says this is achievable with fdisk, by deleting
the partition and next recreating the partition with less cylinders.

This does work! (I've tested it with my boot partition which I didn't care about if I'd lose the data)

But I always thought that with cropping cylinders of a partition you run the risk of cutting data of the partition because free space doesn't necessarily be at the end of a partition.

Am I right about this? Or are the free extents always on the end of the raw partition?

long story thanks for reading