• Use pots in interesting ways to showcase your flowers.flower pots image by photobar from Fotolia.com
  
  A perfectly good flowerpot might never have seen the inside of a garden store—you can grow orchids from an egg. The unexpected selection of a container, or a whole row of containers, will add a note of whimsy or theater to flower gardens, whether they are on the kitchen table, in a window or ringing the patio.
  
  

Mad Tea Party

• Raid the kitchen for flowerpots and have a tea party that blooms into a garden. If your cupboards are a bit bare, find items at a thrift store. Get a wide-mouthed pitcher, an attractive and deep soup bowl, a creamer and sugar without their lids and a teacup with its saucer. Place some fish gravel or small stones in the bottom of the containers and set a flowering plastic nursery pot in each one. You may need to measure the china openings before heading for the nursery. The bottom gravel allows you to water lightly. The plastic pots help to keep the plants moist. Set them on the table for a brunch or lunch. Line them up in the kitchen window in between meals.
  
  

Symbols of Spring

• Position two or three ostrich eggs that have their tops trimmed neatly off and a drainage hole drilled in the bottom in a wooden tray planted with bright green grass. Place small orchid plants in the ostrich shells, fill around them with their preferred sphagnum moss or bark planting medium and anchor them with floral moss at the mouth of the egg. Check with the orchid nursery for the right potting medium for your plants. Use this arrangement on a spring or summer table, or whenever the orchids are in bloom. Remove the eggs from the grass and set in tripod rings or flowerpot holders after the event. The grass will keep growing in the tray, and the orchids will bloom in their shells. You can reassemble the arrangement as necessary.
  
  

Just Add Water

• A collection of three or more clear glass bowls lined up in a window or on a sunny shelf is a water garden with almost no effort. Just fill the bowls with water, add a dwarf lotus or water lily to each one and you have an instant, very visible garden.
  
  

A Row of Little Gardens

• Create an identical row of one-pot gardens on the patio. Use a long wooden tray with a plastic liner or a nice looking plastic tray with a layer of river rocks for drainage. Put aged terra cotta pots or a row of small galvanized tubs with drainage holes on the rocks. Plant your containers with a mixed arrangement of wildflowers. Select tall flowering species for the middle of the pot; gerbera daisies will grow moderately tall or a replaceable pot of tulips or day lilies can be set in the center of the arrangement. Fill the rest of the planting space with purple and lavender alyssum, large pansies or other low flowering plants. Rim the borders with trailing vines or flowers that will lean over the edge of the pot and hang down, such as sweet potato vine or trailing petunias.