A new book about container gardening showed up in my mail last week. I've always been pretty sucktastic at growing things in a pot, at least annuals that require a lot of water in the hot summer months. I don't like doing accessory watering. If it's a waterwise perennial or ornamental grass, I'll grow it in a pot. That's probably why most of my container plantings are pretty boring (unlike the fabulous container plantings of my fellow Get Growing blogger, Craig Sailor).

As I flipped through "Easy Container Gardens," it made me really want to get better at container plantings (not that I will, it just made me want to be). The book certainly makes it look easy. Author Pamela Crawford organized the plant information in a really smart way, with each page devoted to a different container planting, including instructions on how to put it together. It's like a fun little gardening recipe for each container planting.

My favorites:

Silvers: pg 106. This light shade planter is all about shade of silver. Plants are echeveria, begonia, dicondra 'silver falls,' and euphorbia 'diamond frost.'

Weekly Water Only: pg 116. Now we're talking, a container I only have to water once a week (in theory anyway). This box planter is a combination of begonia 'cherry blossom," a spiky ti plant, coleus 'kong rose' and creeping jenny. Take a look at it here:

Find the book here.