In Germany, there was a strong trend toward pot gardening. According to a sketch of the seventeenth-century garden of Christopher Peller in Nurenberg, urns and pots were lavishly scattered about. Around the beds, "there are lower stone borders with ornamental pots set on them: these contain plants of many kinds, with orange-trees and other costly foreign plants that have to pass the winter in a hothouse."

A garden of the same date belonging to Johannes Schwindt, a burgomaster of Frankfort, comprised an enclosure "made of green lattice-work with pillars, windows, and gates," with pots of flowering plants at the windows and on benches.

A visitor to Holland in 1812, described a typical planting at the village of Broek: "The gardens in front of their houses are just as wonderful to look at. You can find everything there except nature . . . trees … no longer look like trees so clipped are their tops." Areas between flower beds "are filled with coloured glass beads, shells, stones, and pots in all manners of colours."

Pot plants were always much used in the East, especially in Chinese gardens, where the emphasis is on pines, foliage plants, and decorated vessels. Commonly grown in vases and containers were dwarf trees, "a main occupation of Chinese gardeners." In China, and elsewhere in eastern countries, the houses adjoin courts, which are "flowering trees and shrubs, or pot plants, which are liked still more."

In early as well as advanced cultures, growing plants in containers has been a universal practice, a symbol of man's innate love and need for growing things. Wherever soil was lacking or the climate was unfavorable, containers made it possible to enjoy the beauty and inspiration of plants. Today, the practice continues to grow, ever changing to fit the needs of the time.

American visitors to the Old World are invariably impressed by the exuberant displays of container plants around homes, in gardens and parks, and in front of public buildings and places of business.

In Lisbon, with its narrow, winding streets, where there is hardly a trickle of sunlight, windowsills and tiny balconies are filled with potted plants. Often, they must compete with clothes hung out to dry. I recall one small balcony that contained numerous pot plants, several pieces of laundry, six song birds in cages, and three shouting green parrots attached to their perches by chains.

Throughout Portugal, containers range from tin cans, clay and decorated glazed pots at entranceways and in small patios, to large cast-stone urns and pots in elegant, formal gardens, like that of the Queluz Palace outside Lisbon. In the moister north, pot plants are seen less frequently than in the hot and dry south, which has a more typically Mediterranean climate.

The countless pot plants around fountains and pools in the Moorish gardens at the Alhambra and Generaliffe Palaces in Granada are unforgettable. At Generaliffe, they are arranged so precisely and symmetrically along the long, narrow canals that they are almost as diverting as the numberless fountains that leap and splash in these gardens where water in its myriad forms plays so important a part. Along the narrow streets of Seville and other Spanish cities, geraniums and climbing roses grow through the intricate lacework of little balconies. Patios, surrounded by high walls, are crammed with potted geraniums, stocks, lemons, oranges, boxwood, sweet bay, jasmines, and Swedish myrtle. Even more, steps are lined with pots of all sizes and descriptions and the tops of walls, also favorite places, resemble miniature gardens.

The Italian garden would be incomplete without potplants. In the terraced gardens of La Mortola in Ventimiglia and Borremeo Castle on Iseo Bello in Lake Maggiore, in the extensive Boboli Gardens in Florence, and in other villa gardens throughout Italy, handsomely designed hand-wrought clay pots are important aspects of the designs. Lemons and oranges, oleanders, gardenias, and geraniums are grown in them.

Around the bay of Naples and along the Italian Riviera, fiery red and pink ivy-leaved geraniums cascade from balconies. In sooty, industrial Milan, Virginia creeper and wisteria vines dominate large boxes on the balconies of new apartment houses. In Sicily, under conditions of poverty and limited space, pot plants still are in evidence, often on shelves suspended on walls or over the doors of one-room houses.

Greece, with its hot, dry summers, is equally a country of gardens and open courtyards of pot plants. In tin cans, whitewashed or painted yellow, pink, or blue to match the house, the Greeks grow their beloved carnations, stocks, gardenias, geraniums, jasmines, and particularly basil, the pungent Indian herb used for flavoring. When immigrants came to America earlier in the century, they brought with them the practice of growing basil and fragrant flowering plants in tins and other makeshift containers.

In Greece, as in Spain, patios and terraces express a way of life. For many, they afford the only place to grow such favorites as aspidistra, elephant's ear, clivia, monstera, ruscus, China asters, cosmos, and marguerites.

Modern suburban gardens, with facilities for watering, have fewer pots; but balconies are packed with them. In Ellini-con, a small village in the Peloponnesus, the fragrant white-flowering August lily (Hosta plantaginea), known also as Corfu lily, is everybody's cherished possession, even supplanting basil.