Container gardening is so satisfying. It takes only soil, a pot and a couple of plants to create a focal point, a personal expression of color and texture or simply a bright spot on the porch. And it's so easy. Most container-gardening books make it sound like you have to sterilize the soil, add the perfect amount of perlite and stick strictly to a combination of three plants in descending sizes. In truth, creating containers isn't a bit like following a cake recipe, where every ingredient is measured just so. Think of it more like making a soup that you can mess around with and still have delicious results.

First, choose containers you love, because their shape, size and color determines what goes inside. The fun is in using contrasting combinations of pots with varied plantings in different seasons, resulting in a kaleidoscope of possibilities. It is good to start any grouping with one large pot at least 24 inches wide so you can use a plant or two that has some height and heft. Pots in glossy dark blue, oxblood red and sage green show off flowers and foliage effectively.

Sound gaudy? Not if you ground the grouping with aggregate pots in classic shapes, or tame down the mix by adding a terra-cotta container or two. Mixing shiny pots with matte finishes makes any grouping more interesting, as does the combination of short and fat pots with taller, urn-shaped ones. As with furniture, a collection of pots that looks as if it has been added to over the years is most interesting. If you move empty pots around on patios, decks and even in the border, you not only save your back but can figure out which combinations look best. Some pots may look so good empty you'll leave them that way, adding a nice architectural element to the garden.

Most, however, will call out for spring flowers. Put a piece of broken clay pot over the hole in the bottom to prevent soil from leaching out, and fill the pot two-thirds full with a good, commercial potting soil. The satisfying part is arranging the plants on top of the soil, tilting, jostling and squeezing them in until they look just right. Then fill in around their roots with soil, packing it in gently but firmly until the roots are well covered and the soil is about an inch or so below the lip of the pot. Water thoroughly, then check if you need to add more soil.

In early spring, nurseries have a good variety of bulbs ready to pop into containers. Just be sure to pack them in thickly so it will look as if you were clever enough to pot up plenty of bulbs last October. It is eye-catching to use tulips or daffodils in the ground and repeat them raised up in pots. Flowers particularly susceptible to slugs, such as primroses and little Iris reticulata, have a far better chance of escaping beheading when grown in pots than in the ground.

Bulbs are a display all by themselves. Nothing is lovelier than a soft green pot holding a stand of pale pink ruffled 'Angelique' tulips, a dark blue container stuffed with orange ranunculus or a pot of hyacinths to perfume the porch. Shrubs or small trees kept year-round in containers can be perked up by a skirt of spring flowers.

This time of year, when so much is blooming and the garden is frothing with new foliage, it perhaps looks best to use just one kind of flower per pot, be it wallflowers, pansies, daffodils or primroses, then mix and match the pots to come up with pleasing arrangements. After the bulbs or spring-flowering perennials are finished blooming, replant them into the ground. There the bulbs will ripen and flower next spring, and the perennials will settle in nicely. And you'll have a batch of empty pots ready to be planted up for summer.

Now In Bloom

One of spring's greatest pleasures is watching perennials reappear, and few make a more dramatic entrance than the Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum 'Pictum'). It emerges from the ground as tightly wound coils that unfurl into low, lacy fronds in green and purple gilded with a sheen of silver. Despite its artistic appearance, this fern is a tough groundcover (8 to 12 inches high) for shady spots.

Valerie Easton is manager at the Miller Horticultural Library. Her new book, "Plant Life: Growing a Garden in the Pacific Northwest" (Sasquatch Books, 2002) is an updated selection of her magazine columns. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com