Container gardens offer so much versatility.  They are re-usable, inexpensive and properly planted, can provide color from March to November!  The trick is to replant the container with each new season. Let’s start from November and work our way through the year.  There is a chill in the air, you’ve finished raking the leaves and you discover some tulips, daffodils or grape hyacinths  you’ve neglected to plant.  Take your container (we’ll use a 14″ pot as an example here) and remove any and all plant material.  Top off the pot with a potting soil mix.  Dibble down 4-6″ into the soil and plant your pot.  Your taller daffodils would be your uprights, your tulips would be your mid-sized and your grape hyacinths would in this case be labeled your trailing types. Come springtime you’ll have a cheery pot full of spring flowers.  Add a few pansies to extend the flowering and you are all set till May! When the season warms up enough in May to set out your annual bedding plants, either remove the spent bulbs, or plant over them.  Just mix and match according to your color or plant preferences.  Come mid-September, remove the annual plants, and again, following the recipe for success, replant with fall mums, ornamental kales, fall pansies or experiment with late season perennials. Finally, to dress the house up for the holidays, take spent flowers out, cut back perennials, and replace with fresh greens.  Boughs of fresh pine, hemlock and fir look great when contrasted with holly, variegated eunomous or even twigs of white birch branches. Once you get a feel for the growth habit of most plants you can mix and match plants to achieve great looks all throughout the year.  This model works just as well on a whiskey barrel as it does on our 14″ planter.  Have fun creating your pot full of color all year long!