The shrub, tree and perennial sections of the nursery offer plenty of alternatives to the usual winter pansies and those bulky, rigid cabbages. If you must use cabbages, and I admit they have colorful frills, be sure to plant them so deep they appear to be a ruffled plate sitting on the surface of the soil. The smaller salad-plate-sized cabbages are best because they can be tucked into the sides of a pot and become part of a combination of plants. It doesn't take long for the bigger cabbages to look like bolted toadstools on steroids.

Enough about what not to plant. As in any season, start out with good soil, since a small volume of dirt has to provide everything the plants need from now until the bulbs finish blooming in late springtime. You'll need to empty out the soil from summer, which is worn out with keeping all those flowers in bloom, and probably is packed with roots anyway. Choose a good commercial soil mix made for containers, and mix in some bulb fertilizer, too.

Planting up pots is as satisfying as making lasagna, and the recipe is no more exacting. Have you ever made a lasagna that turned out the same way twice? It always depends on the juiciness of the sauce, how many vegetables you toss in, and how much cheese you have the patience to grate. But the layering principle is always the same, as is the satisfying feel of squeezing all that goodness into one container.

Start with a nice, deep pot for layering in bulbs, digging down enough to put a couple of bulbs in the same hole. You could choose mid-season tulips (late-season tulips bloom just at the time you'll be tempted to put in annuals), for the deepest layer, then top off with earlier blooming, smaller bulbs like Iris reticulata or crocus, leaving a couple of inches of soil between each layer of bulbs. If your pot is deep enough, add a mid-layer of small daffodils. This way the pot will bloom from February through May. Just be sure to leave at least 8 to 12 inches of soil over the bulbs to insulate them from cold and hold the roots of the plants you'll add to carry the pot through Thanksgiving.

The top layer is a little more complicated than a lasagna's coating of cheese, and much prettier. Miniature conifers have great texture and tawny autumn coloration. Look for the dwarfest ones you can find, like the yellow Thuja orientalis 'Aurea Nana' and the silver-blue Juniperus horizontalis 'Blue Pygmy.' Small, deciduous trees and shrubs, such as the contorted hazelnut or a lacy Japanese maple, live happily in containers for years, and look lovely in springtime surrounded by crocus and then tulips.

In the pot in the photo, the golden trim on the variegated hebe (H. x franciscana 'Variegata') accents the warm purple of the Michaelmas daisies (Aster novi-belgii). The flat heads of Sedum 'Matrona' were chosen to contrast with the silvery fluff of Artemisia 'Powis Castle,' which in turn was picked to drape over the sage-green pot. The burgundy fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum 'Purpureum') adds height and the interest of its fox-tail blooms. In late winter, all the plants (except the grass, which isn't hardy) can be planted in the garden to make way for the bulbs that will sprout from the same pot come early spring.

Now In Bloom After a dry summer, Japanese maples may begin to show autumn color by late September. The fernleaf full moon maple (Acer japonicum 'Aconitifolium') is a small, delicate-looking tree, growing to only about 10 feet in a decade. It likes rich, well-drained soil, and does well in full sun to part shade. In spring, it has little white and maroon flowers; in summer the soft green leaves are accented by red stems, and in autumn the tree turns bright orange and red with tints of deep purple.