If you yearn for color in your garden, annuals are your best bet. Annuals germinate, bloom, and die in one year, but they mature quickly, and most flower continuously from spring until fall. The plants we've chosen here love sun (at least six hours a day or more), but there are also annuals that prefer shade.

And though pots of annuals alone make a beautiful garden, you can add even more drama by creating a foliage back-drop of potted perennials, as shown here. Choose perennials that will last from season to season in your zone.

Plants: Look for plants tagged "Beds & Borders" and "Proven Winners." Amateurs and experts alike swear by their reliability.

Planting Tips: To avoid visual cacophony, limit your palette to no more than three colors of flowers, and fill the majority of pots with only one kind of plant.

Where you're combining plants, mix no more than three, and vary them by height and growing habit (combine a plant such as a tall salvia with a mounding plant like nemesia or a trailing plant like bacopa).

Put the tallest plants in the center, the mounding varieties around them, and the trailing plants closest to the edges of the pot. Be sure the plants you combine have similar water, light, and fertilizer needs.

Don't hesitate to crowd annuals into pots as long as there's enough water and fertilizer for all and the roots have room to expand. Take into account how big the plants will be when mature (read tags). You don't want to repot plants that have outgrown their containers in July.

To give newly planted annuals a full look, try this trick the pros use: Invest in a few hanging baskets of mature trailing plants, such as calibrachoa or verbena; divide each into two or three plants with a sharp knife; and combine with smaller, less expensive starters.

Containers: Choose glazed ceramic, metal, plastic, or cast stone (concrete) pots for optimum water retention.

Soil: Choose a sterilized mix containing a sphagnum-peat-moss base, a wetting agent, perlite, and some composted organic matter (like aged, pulverized bark). A mix with time-release fertilizer and moisture-storing polymers will reduce maintenance. If you can't find a mix with fertilizer or polymers, buy them separately and add them according to the package directions. In the East, South, and Midwest, look for Pro-Mix Ultimate Container Mix with water-holding crystals and fertilizer. In the West, look for Supersoil Potting Soil (add your own polymers, such as Soil Moist Crystals). All are available at garden centers and nurseries. Or try the widely available Schultz Moisture Plus Potting Mix with time-release plant food.

Watering: Annuals need to be watered frequently, perhaps even daily, depending on your climate and the pots you've chosen. Water when the soil feels dry down to an inch. Don't water in the heat of the day; early morning is the best time.

Fertilizer: As a booster to the time-release formula in the potting mix, apply a water-soluble balanced fertilizer every two to three weeks. Try Miracle-Gro All-Purpose Plant Food. If you prefer an organic fertilizer, try Wegener's Liquid Organic Growth Promotant, available from Garden Tools by Lee Valley (www.leevalley.com).