On Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:02:43 +0100, "Mr Pounder"
wrote:

Thanks to all of the people that helped me.

What I did was to rip up a flower bed that never did much and put some
pebbles down.
The pebbles are all the way around my back lawn, the flower bed looked a bit
out of place.
Them pebbles don't come cheap!

I moved an existing big stone plant pot that always seems to have green
stuff and some sort of flowers growing out of it; I planted some crocus
bulbs in there. This should give me some colour Feb - March.

Thanks again for the help, pity all newsgroups aren't like this one.

Mr Pounder

With the aim of year-round colour, one thing I do may offer a
solution.

I've bought a reasonable quantity of (identical) large plastic plant
pots with good drainage holes - about a foot in diameter and about a
foot and a half deep (not your average flower pot). Then in my borders
I've got various things planted in the ground and in between, I've dug
holes and sunk some of the empty pots into them (with a few addedd
drainage holes drilled in the bottom and the sides). Ditto in some of
my tubs I've got a plant pot sunk into a hole. In an out of the way
part of the garden, the rest of the pots are planted up with a range
of things - some with lillies, some with spring bulbs, some with early
flowering perennials, some with mid or late flowering ones. I've got
chrysanthemums, dahlias, all sorts of things. Then, at the appropriate
time of the year, a pot of plants gets put into the empty pot in the
ground/tub. When the flowers have gone over, the pots go back into the
"out of the way" area and new ones go into the ground/tubs.

So I always have plants in bloom around the garden and in the winter,
anything tender is easily put into the greenhouse (or wherever you can
protect them). The only secret is don't use bog standard multi-purpose
compost. I plant up the pots with a 60/40 mix of a high quality
compost and John Innes No 3.

If you can get pots that fit your plant pot this might be an easy way
of having round the year colour without having to continually buy
flowering plants from the garden centre.

Cheers

Jake