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Photo Credit: Sam Spiro/folio.com

Before fall frosts hit, replace warm-season annuals with mums and other fall flowers that do well despite cold nighttime temperatures.

Colorful containers can add all kinds of flavor to your landscape year-round, but too many gardeners only fill them for the summer. Sure, marigolds, petunias, impatiens and other tender plants offer all kinds of warm-weather color, but what about the rest of the year?

Consider changing out your pots each season for beautiful displays every month of the year. (This is especially nice to do with permanent containers like window boxes and built-in planters.)

Here’s how to have beautiful, full containers and planters, no matter the season:

Fall. While most of your neighbors are storing their containers in the garage for the winter, you can be filling yours with mums, ornamental cabbages and kale, as well as other fall-blooming plants. If you can find them in your garden center, pansies are a good choice, too – they’ll bloom into the winter in mild-winter climates (USDA hardiness Zone 6 and warmer).

Fall is also the perfect time to get creative and tuck in cut branches of shrubs and trees that have beautiful fall color, berries or showy grass seed heads for additional interest. Just push the cut ends into a container’s soil, much in the way you would with a flower arrangement in a large vase. If autumn weather is reliably below 50 degrees F, snip long-lasting bits of perennials like tall sedums, and insert their cut ends into the soil, too. Or tuck tiny pumpkins, pinecones, Indian corn, gourds or other adornments in and around your potted plants. These cold-hardy, seasonal plantings should last you a few months until the heart of winter.

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Photo Credit: Veronica Lorson Fowler

Dress up your winter containers by simply cutting branches from evergreen trees in the garden and tucking them into planters along with pinecones, berries and twinkling lights.

Winter. Snow, frost and ice will kill even the most cold-tolerant mums and other fall plants in containers. So after your region’s first heavy frost, pull out your damaged container plants for a seasonal change.

Evergreens are a natural for winter. You can usually find tiny ones at garden centers to use as centerpieces for a winter planting. While these beauties work well in containers all year in Zone 8 and warmer (and sometimes even in zones 6-7), they won’t last in cooler climates. They’ll look nice most of winter, but unless you try some good overwintering practices, they’re likely to brown and drop their needles come spring.