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Lately, walking around my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I've had a serious case of wandering eye: I can't stop staring at window boxes.

For weeks I've been obsessed with what to plant in the two soil-filled trenches taking up space on my back deck. I've compared the efforts of every single brownstone on our block, but it feels like the gardening equivalent of Goldilocks: This one's dominated by flowers that are an icky pink (think: the bright coral polish of every Golden Girl in Boca), that one's too fussy, and who fills an entire planter with just petunias!?

I was shocked to discover I had so many opinions about flowers, and worse, absolutely no clue how to combine them to get that bushy, healthy, and seemingly effortless lots-of-different-colors-and-textures look. Then, while home visiting my mom in Detroit this past weekend, I found the answer at -- where else? -- Costco.

Containers Made Easy! An entire magazine devoted to my plight.

I spent the entire weekend tagging pages with little Post-Its and scribbling down species I'd never heard of before but suddenly had to have in my life. Creeping Jenny! Confetti Lantana! Karma Sangria Dahlias! I was drunk on plants.
Which is odd because I'd never heard the term "container gardening" before. Apparently it's the gardening-enthusiast name for what poor city dwellers like me are forced to do. Since we have no grass to speak of, let alone a real garden to plant, we perk up our window sills and concrete rooftops with pretty pots teeming with flowers.

But Containers Made Easy, I was delighted to discover, elevated that to a fine art.

There are stories showing you how to pick plants that mimic the shades in a Monet painting, or how to use a floral fabric you like as a jumping off point for your container. They teach you to think about how the color and texture and glaze of your pot will tie in with the flowers and the leaves -- not to mention the patterns of veins in said leaves. But they had me at one of the cover stories:

"Star plants!" the headline screamed. "10 Flowers That Bloom All Summer!"

Be still my beating heart. Then I discovered that Containers Made Easy also offers "recipes." In other words, 30 different window boxes broken down into diagrams which show you exactly where to plant what -- and how many of each plant you'll need.

At least now I know why my feeble attempt at orange and yellow zinnias with cascading potato vine (a trailing plant! I had felt very advanced) fell a little flat last summer: I had planted about eight plants in all, instead of the recommended 30 PER WINDOW BOX!

Apparently you have to crush the plants' bulbs to pack them all in, but don't worry, the magazine assures you, it won't hurt 'em a bit. Oh. Armed with all this new knowledge, I'm now on a quest.

The hardest part is that once this flowering multiverse has been revealed to you, it's easy to get dizzy with the possibilities. So far, Containers Made Easy has published three special issues (available for $9.95 each). But Volume 2 is already sold out, so apparently I'm not the only one who finds magazines about plants in pots a hot commodity. As you might imagine, the guy in my life thinks I've gone mad.


Have a window box recipe that's worked for you? Send it in and you might just receive a pack of seeds from a star plant in return.


Carrie Sloan is the Editor in Chief of Lemondrop. She nearly killed her first plant -- named "Ninja" -- in college, and had to send it it home to her mom to rehab. She's hoping for better luck this summer.