Over the years we have acquired quite a collection of garden pots, urns, and other associated garden containers. Each one represents a miniature aspect of the garden, to us. Each one is planted anew in spring with bulbs kept overwintered in our basement, or fresh plants that we buy at gardening centres.

Sometimes I take snippets of vines or ground covers from the rock garden beside the house to help fill in the containers and give them some additional focus.

We rarely plant annuals in our garden beds. And the reason for that is simply because there is no room for them. In the garden beds and borders that we maintain we have planted ornamental trees, shrubs, and perennials.

They give shape, texture and colour to the garden, presenting a variety of living green tableaus to greet our eyes in shifting presentations depending on the time of observation, because they are always in flux, those micro-scenic areas that we so value.

Since perennials bloom only when it is their time to do so; early spring, spring, early summer, summer, late summer and fall, the colour they present is sporadic and ephemeral, in a succession of floral tributes to the seasons.

Obviously, the only way to enjoy continuous displays of colour in a garden is to have a combination of perennials and annuals, each complementing the other. In view of the fact that we have little room to spare for annuals in the garden beds, we have accommodated that fact by adding those miniature gardens, if you will, contained in pots and urns.

Those containers in and of themselves render an architectural element to the gardens, for each of the pots and urns presents as unique, both in their form and texture and in the living flora that they contain flourishing in their own singular habitat, as it were.

Taken all together, garden pots, garden beds and borders and the garden hardscape which my husband built himself, our gardens comprise the culmination of our efforts to maintain and enjoy the beauty of an all-too-short summer in a northern land more familiar with the overwhelming presence of winter.