Tigridia pavonia is yet another bulb worth trying, and its bright display of white, orange and pink flowers each marked with red spots, clearly show why it is called the tiger flower.

Pots of Pleasure Container gardening New Series Don't let convention cramp your style when it comes to container gardening. Rather, allow your imagination to run wild, be creative and enjoy yourself Brim full of flowers, pots tubs and hanging baskets have their own special magic, says John Kelly &bquoThe secret of potted gardens is to remember to water and feed them throughout the growing season&equo Gardening in miniature can be just as rewarding, keep pots and plants in proportion and position where they can be viewed in detail Group potted plants carefully to create a massed display. Replace faded specimens with new to keep the display going

Have you come across those people who are always moving their furniture about? One day the settee is opposite the door, the next it is where the telly was before it was swapped round with the nest of tables. The carpet gets turned round, your favourite chair feels all wrong, and yet it only takes you an hour or two to wonder why it was obviously never done like this before.

By contrast gardening, much as we love it, is generally a bit static. You can't just dig up a magnolia one July day and put it in the gap left by the camellia &mdash it will die rather quickly. Of course, that is partly why we are gardeners. It suits us that haste is made slowly and that we have to think and plan before we commit ourselves. On the other hand it is restful and good for us to change tempo even in the things we enjoy most. To be able to create different effects by changing plants around is exciting, and it also tends to teach us quite a lot about the relationships in spacing of plants, of different shapes and habits of growth.

That is one of the reasons why container gardening catches the imagination. Then there are the containers themselves which have to be chosen as carefully as the plants that will be grown in them.

Pots and Containers
Pots come in all shapes, sizes and colours. You can have terracotta ones in the true flower-pot shape or covered with embossed designs in a sort of classical manner. There are stone pots and earthenware ones with luxury glazes, ancient pots that you find at house sales in the country, and, of course, plastic pots which now come textured and coloured so closely to terracotta that they cannot be told apart.

Places of Interest Those maddening corners that defeat you &mdash nooks and niches that are too small or too narrow for making a bed or border &mdash cry out for the sort of tubs, urns or vases that will change them from cinderellas into ball-gowned beauties. Places that are dank in winter but pleasantly cool in summer, are made delightful by a stone bowl or tulips or a tumble of petunias.

You can grow your plants in round vases, graceful urns, square &bquoVersailles&equo tubs, tubby tubs, old stone water troughs and new, artificial ones. You can express yourself by planting in ancient wooden wheelbarrows or new ones made of the purpose. You can garden in a mobile manner with a superannuated birth bath, the sink from a demolished country cottage, or in the sophisticated creation of a top designer. With hanging baskets, windowboxes, and those tiny gardens in dishes that sit on patio tables there is a whole world from which to make your own, highly personal statement. containers &mdash for that is what they are &mdash have architectural value, too. A classical, goblet-shaped stone urn, placed on a plinth at the end of a long, narrow lawn draws the mixed borders on either side together and integrates them. A small trough, seemingly casually placed at the side of steps winding through a rock garden, suggest a pause &mdash a place to contemplate the intricate display of alpines and other miniature plants.

No Hiding Place Sitting containers on pallets or bricks goes a long way toward preventing them from harbouring all kinds of pests under their bottoms. Smaller pots can be moved easily, and it's a good idea to do so, as you can demolish the slugs and creepy-crawlies that have accumulated in the cool dampness beneath. On the Move

While we are still all romantics at heart we gardeners are also practical. Containers are heavy, especially when filled with moist compost and topped with hearty plant specimens. They can also be extremely awkward, never more so than when loaded with the needle-tips of a yucca or the sharks teeth of an agave. None of this need stop us.

My favourite method is to stand the container on a wooden pallet. You then take two stout battens and insert them below the pallet like the arms of a fork-lift truck. You take one pair of ends, your willing helper takes the other, and off you go.

When you move your smaller containers around, take a critical look. Have you been trawling the sales and picking up every urn and tub that caught your fancy? If so, is what you have put together really just a motley collection with a messy clash of styles and materials? Nothing looks more like a junkyard then a junkyard. We all try to garden economically, but I sometimes despair of the bits-of-old-inner-tube school of gardening. A mismatched, haphazard gang of pots looks terrible and it is worth investing some decent money in creating a cohesive style. Don't abandon your individual approach, and avoid making the lace look poverty-stricken. I use old wooden buckets and half-barrels with noble histories. They didn't cost a great deal, but they do look quite classy in a boozy sort of way.