REMEMBER WHEN terra cotta and maybe a high-fired glaze or two were about the only kinds of pots around? Now it's impossible to get safely past the dazzling array that local nurseries and garden centers stock. And perhaps nowhere else in the country are so many of these pots being cleverly used. The colors now run the gamut from turquoise to oxblood, and the textures are so palpable you can't help but stroke the pots as much as the plants.

JULIE NOTARIANNI /THE SEATTLE TIMES
			In scale, fragrance and number of blooms, no plant brightens winter like a witch hazel. All the Chinese Hamamelis mollis cultivars carry a deliciously sweet scent; all have surprisingly frost-proof, spidery little flowers in shades from soft yellow through copper to maroon in H. 'Diane.' The scent is long-lasting when boughs are brought into the house. My two favorites are H. x intermedia 'Pallida' because its bright yellow flowers appear early in January when we need flowers the most, and H. x intermedia 'Jelena' with fluffy flowers in fiery orange.

We owe it all to AW Pottery, a wholesale distributor of all things pot-like. Ask at most retailers and you'll learn they order from AW. The company's frost-proof wares come in such an avalanche of styles that gardeners are inspired to add focal points and architectural flourishes to class up the landscape. AW sells pots that are Asian, Gothic or Italianesque, classic or modern, smooth or bumpy, in sizes from table-top to taller-than-human.

A visit to AW — in Lynnwood, but open only to those lucky few with a wholesale license — is an awe-inspiring experience. I was wandering around there recently with a friend who, gazing up, declared herself submerged in "pot porn." A parking lot is filled with piles of urns and tubs, glazed and patterned, rusted and shiny. Inside the gate are towering wooden scaffolds holding pots layered like lasagna in the sky so you walk beneath rows and rows of pot bellies. From this command central, nurseries and garden centers throughout the Northwest place their orders.

"There's so much business here it's madness," says AW vice president Christopher Jacobs. "We're helped by the nice, long gardening season." Because the demand for pots is so intense right here, the company no longer needs to travel to the shows in New York and Chicago.

The business began in California in 1981, where Jacobs' wife, Lee Lang Aw, made pots and sold them out of the front yard. Her father had been a famous sculptor who escaped from his native China to Malaysia. Jacobs and Aw began importing pots and selling them in flea markets around the Bay Area. "She just kind of figured out the business as she went along," says Jacobs of his wife, whose last name is now the company's name. Soon they had Saxe Floral and City People's as their first Seattle clients. By 1991, after years of delivering pots to Seattle every four weeks in the back of their red pickup, Jacobs and Aw decided to move north.

Now AW imports pots from all over the world. Aw's brother, ceramist and sculptor Albert Aw, develops new shapes and colors for the line. Their rustic pots, based on traditional Chinese containers for soy sauce, oil or water, have sold well for more than 20 years. Their rounded bulk in tones of honey, green, rust and brown has a real presence in the garden, and the rough surfaces and naturalistic glazes give an ancient depth to the finish. Jacobs thinks the secret of the rustic line's longevity is that, chameleon-like, they easily fit into any garden style.

The reason for the company's longevity lies in its ability to come up with fresh styles and colors for the ever-voracious gardening market. Their zinc pots are sleekly modern and lightweight. New glazes from Vietnam include a luminous speckled green, called Honeydew, that's been a best-seller. "There's lots of variation between the color of each piece, which is part of the charm," says Jacobs. He expects chili red, a vivid new color, to be equally popular. And AW just got in a shipment of antique tinaja, wine pots from Spain, some as tall as 13 feet.

You can check out the stock at www.awpottery.com, which lists local retailers. Or you can visit A Muse In the Garden (when it reopens for the season in February), AW's much smaller retail outlet for seconds and extra stock, at 21031 76th Ave. W. in Edmonds. (Call 425-778-2292 for hours and days.)

Valerie Easton is a Seattle free-lance writer and contributing editor for Horticulture magazine. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Jacqueline Koch is a writer and photographer living on Whidbey Island.