Decide on a Location

If you would rather use pots or other containers for your evening garden, you can arrange them virtually anywhere — on a patio or a deck, near a walkway, along the edge of your existing garden, or in a corner of the lawn.

Choose Your Flowers and Foliage

Most nighttime plants, especially annuals, are suited to container gardening. When it comes to deciding what to put in your pots, remember that a little bit of fragrance goes a long way.
Be sparing in your use of aromatic blooms, and put some distance between them. They should perfume the night, not overpower one another.

Install Your Garden

As with a standard evening garden, you’ll want to vary the heights of the plants to create visual interest. Settle on a mix of attractive containers in different shapes, sizes, and materials (such as wood, metal, resin, ceramic, fiberglass, and clay), or consider repurposing vessels you already own, such as an old bucket. Black and dark-colored pots accentuate plant colors at night and make the blooms look as if they’re floating.

Shown in Picture

Even a small space works for a nighttime container garden. Just be sure to use several different plants for a mix of textures. Cleome, also known as spider flower, tolerates heat well and doesn’t need staking.

Green-and-white caladium and chartreuse bacopa seem to glow in the dark.

Designate one plant to be the garden’s showstopper. White cosmos is a prolific bloomer and makes a great cutting flower.

At least one plant in your evening garden, like this vanilla-scented white heliotrope (lower right), should have a heavenly perfume.