No matter where you live, you can enjoy flowers planted in containers. Growing flowers in pots, planters, or even old wheelbarrows (!) satisfies that longing we all have for Nature’s most colorful and fragrant creations. Hans Christian Andersen was right when he said that we must have a little flower. And you can delight in having flowers in pots even if you have a small balcony or patio.

I know how satisfying it is to grow some greenery in unlikely spaces. When I was a child in Brooklyn, New York, I longed to grow something, and so I grew plants in large tomato sauce cans on our fire escape. We lived on the top floor and I saw it as my little garden in the sky. I punched drainage holes in the bottom of the cans with a screwdriver. I filled them with soil from a neighbor’s yard and planted them up. It wasn’t the best technique, but it worked. I had my prized marigolds, tomatoes, and coleus sitting outside my window.

Outdoor container gardening makes eminent sense if you are a flower lover. Growing in planters and pots allows you to enjoy flowers and help in the effort to feed our endangered pollinators. All you need is some high-quality potting mix, a suitable container, and a few small plants. With these you can have a colorful display on a terrace, deck, balcony, or outdoors in the garden. You may start with a pot or two of petunias and then add a geranium, and slowly it might become an obsession. Ask any gardener and they will tell you that planters, overflowing with vegetation, are like rabbits—they seem to multiply overnight. Soon, you will have planters on your porch or balcony, alongside the driveway, on your entry steps, and even placed within plant beds.

The art of growing plants in outdoor planters—especially flowers—has come a long way since the late 1960s and the introduction of specialized “soil” mixes formulated for growing plants in containers. Those potting mixes were lightweight, offered good aeration, and were able to hold ample moisture for plant growth. The ability to fill large outdoor pots with a uniform and sterile “soil” mix transformed what was a small gardening practice into what is now a big part of the horticultural industry. Today, there are many potting mixes for growing all kinds of plants. The mixes are reliable and consistent. Some contain slow-release fertilizer and others are organically based with earthworm castings, compost, and much more. These mixes make the task of growing big blooms in a planter easy.

This chapter offers tips and suggestions for creating beautiful planters full of herbaceous (soft-stemmed) flowers—both perennial and annuals. The photos I share are meant to spark ideas for growing your own floral paradise in containers. If a specific plant that I suggest catches your fancy, please look for more information about it in catalogs, magazines, or the Internet. Some of the photos shown here are from gardens I designed for clients, and many planter combinations were created by the exceptional garden center, Michael’s Garden Gate Nursery, in Mount Kisco, New York.

Planters full of flowers add a sublime, life-giving energy to any space. They can help our pollinators and give us joy at the same time. In this chapter, I aim to inspire you to try your hand at growing flowers in planters and pots so that you can join in the fun, no matter where you live.

Looking like small orchids, Nemesia, an annual flower, hangs over a pot in spring. With a rainbow of colors available, Nemesia is a great addition to any cool-season container or garden. Heat-tolerant cultivars and beautiful bicolor blooms are available. Plant with pansies, violas, and white alyssum for a wonderful spring planter.

The myriad colors of annual flowers is on display in this planter. The unique bicolor blooms of Supertunia® ‘Pretty Much Picasso’ is on the right, trailing over the edge. It has a deep violet throat with lighter violet petals edged with a chartreuse border. The star-shaped, light blue flowers in the center are long-blooming blue stars (Laurentia axillaris).

Lavender fan flowers (Scaevola aemula) overhang the side of a metal urn. This easy-care annual flower in a raised container adds a colorful touch to a landscape of ornamental grasses.