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If you are tired of autumn container clichés - ornamental cabbages, coloured dogwood branches, chrysanthemums - you will have a soulmate in Margaret Serrao. She is the horticultural brains behind Toronto's Fiesta Gardens, a place that offers choice plants and a lot of gardening wisdom.

Looking for curb appeal that lasts through fall and into winter, we asked Serrao to put together some containers with material that just about anyone, even those who aren't great designers, could work with.

Rather than choosing annuals that would be tossed out at the end of the season, she suggests using perennials, especially evergreens. These days, there are so many gorgeous dwarf evergreens, including shapes that range from fluffy to pointed to weirdly twisted. Boxwoods, moreover, thrive with severe pruning and offer strong structural form.

Where people go wrong in making up containers is that they jam plants in and don't keep the scale of the plants in proportion with the size of the pot, creating arrangements either top-heavy with plants or meagre little arrangements in huge pots. It's also important to keep in mind the scale of the plants in relation to each other - try using one prominent evergreen and perennials with smaller contrasting texture and leaf sizes in one pot.

Once you have a superb evergreen as a central focus, you can see what perennials are left in nurseries at this time of year or dig up some plants from the garden (grasses, sedges, hellebores, heucheras) that will keep their foliage all winter long.

This style of perennial container will last for up to four years and can be tweaked in December with brightly coloured berries, dogwood twigs or a few ornaments.

Marjorie Harris is editor-at-large for Gardening Life; check out her blog at marjorieharris.com. Fiesta Gardens (416-580-9060) is located at 200 Christie St. in Toronto.

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How to build it

Stick with five elements

According to Margaret Serrao of Fiesta Gardens in Toronto, you should keep your containers simple and elegant, choosing a maximum of five elements. Use an evergreen as the focal point and build around it with contrasting perennials.

Pick winter-worthy pots

Buy at least one good winter-worthy container a year. Perennial containers must be a minimum of 50 centimetres wide by 60 centimetres deep.

Line with Styrofoam

Before planting, line the container with three-quarters of an inch of Styrofoam. (Make a paper template for each side of the planter and cut the Styrofoam according to the templates.) For proper drainage, put the container on a riser of about 10 cm high: bricks are good, as are boards.

Make your own mix

Do not use bagged potting soil, which is only good for annuals. Make your own mix of half horticultural sand and half topsoil and compost. Once planted, the soil should come to within 10 cm of the top. Make up that depth with a layer of mulch (composted pine bark) and, if you like the look, add a layer of gravel to top it off.

Water once a week

Water deeply until it comes out the bottom, then water once a week until December. Keep an eye on containers during any freeze-thaw times in January and start regular watering in very early spring.

M.H.