Put football and flowers together, and what you get is "sporticulture" -- a new twist on gardening that pairs team-spirited pots with mums, pansies and other colorful blooms perfect for the season.

Sporticulture is the brainchild of Cortland Smith, an unabashed Washington Redskins fan who walked into a greenhouse full of red and yellow pansies and saw more than beautiful flowers -- he saw his team in living color. Smith and his business partner, Pete Gilmore, took their concept to the NFL, which recognized a niche market and granted the necessary licensing. The two business partners have been running with it ever since.

"It's not as much about gardening as it is about decorating," Gilmore says, emphasizing the idea of pretty grab-and-go plants in pots that, with little fuss, turn a front porch or patio into a welcoming party venue. The game-day decorators who have picked up on the idea are mostly women, he says, but the appeal is growing. "We are hoping men, millennials, all kinds of people look at this and say, 'Oh, that's my team -- that's cool,' and take it to a friend's house," Gilmore says.

Sporticulture made a quiet launch of its products in 2015. This year is the big kickoff: Fans across the country can find their favorites at garden shops and big-box stores. You can buy mums in Green Bay Packers gold in an NFL-themed pot, or fire-engine red mums in a two-gallon container sporting the arrowhead logo of the Kansas City Chiefs. These products "bring team colors to life," as the Sporticulture website says. Just so fans don't miss the message, big plant labels amid the blooms look like football helmets.

The promotion gives growers and garden shops that are already marketing long-lasting fall mums and cold-tolerant pansies a new way to expand their fall offerings, says Gilmore, who has been in the horticulture business for 40 years. Sporticulture sells the pots and makes recommendations for plants, but garden shops are free to interpret the color schemes with plants appropriate for their own regions, he says. In Florida, one shop packed pots with colorful crotons, which just happen to echo the orange accent of the Miami Dolphins' colors.

"We want growers to be creative" in matching one or more team colors with the pots, Gilmore says. He has seen pots packed with short-stemmed sunflowers and black-eyed Susans, and he looks forward to seeing ever more imaginative combinations as the concept catches on.

Sports fans can show their colors without NFL-licensed pots, of course. A tailgate party might sprout an array of small pots of team-themed flowers on a line of scrimmage across a tabletop. A Baltimore Ravens fan could plant purple asters and shimmering goldenrod around the patio for a flash of glory in the fall. If you're a Pittsburgh Steeler at heart, your team's colors are black and gold, so mums, black-eyed Susans, heleniums and gloriosa daisies would all be appropriate golden-hued choices for a flower bed near the front door -- with yellow, orange and blue accents echoing the Steelers logo.

If you're in doubt about matching colors, you could take your cues from the Glidden paint company, which offers a series of official team-spirit color combinations for NFL fans, as well as for baseball, soccer, hockey, NASCAR and men's and women's NBA teams. You can find them at The Home Depot. While you're picking up a gallon of silver paint for the Dallas Cowboys-themed rec room, tuck a few other paint chips in your pocket, and you'll be able to color-check flowers in the garden shop on your way out. Remember that, just like paint chips, flower (and foliage) colors tend to look different depending on the source of light. On a sunny fall day, even bright hues might look a little washed out. Flower colors also vary in intensity over the course of their blooming period. You can keep the colors fresh by pinching off blooms as they fade -- and by reminding yourself that it's just for fun. Don't worry about whether your Minnesota Vikings-themed purple, gold and white plant combos exactly match everybody's game-day jerseys.

Sporticulture, the company, sees a lot of potential at the intersection of horticulture and sports. Their product lineup includes giant plastic lawn bags that look like team helmets when they're stuffed full of leaves. They're also selling LED lights that project your team's logo onto the garage door. You can even buy a retractable hose decorated with the snazzy logos of NFL teams. The company was recognized with two industry awards for innovation and new products. It may sound like another crazy sports concept, but putting gardening on the gridiron is a first down for flowers. Go for it.

Sources

Game On

-- Sporticulture pots full of blooms are available in independent garden shops and in big-box stores. For availability, check the Sporticulture Facebook page or email info@sporticulture.com. For other Sporticulture products, see amazon.com or fanfesto.com. For more information, see sporticulture.com.

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)

You'll find lots of advice these days about putting your garden to bed in the fall, but this is a season of life and color. Don't let your garden sleep through it!

Great gardens, in fact, practically never sleep. If you choose plants carefully, design for year-round interest and use your imagination, your garden will be as pretty in the year's waning months -- or in the snow -- as it is in high summer.

After summer's heat, it's pleasant to be able to get outdoors a little more, but there's no pressure to try to accomplish everything at once. The fall is a time for puttering. If you've planned ahead, the asters are blooming now, ornamental grasses flaunt their feathery flower heads, a few choice shrubs are displaying ripe berries, and roses, revived by cooler temperatures, produce blooms of the most intense color and fragrance of the year. The days are growing shorter, and on a crisp fall day, time seems richer than ever as you plant solid, crinkly-skinned tulip and daffodil bulbs by the dozens.

Fall is also a good time to do a little bit of pruning, cutting back shrubs that encroach on paths or block views. You can save the hard work of renovating overgrown plants until spring. In the fall, just make selective cuts to enhance the appearance of deciduous shrubs and tidy up the growth habits of evergreens. Too much cutting can stimulate growth here at the wrong season for it, so step back from your snipping after a just a few minutes. Now is mainly a time to admire and enjoy your garden.

Fall is the traditional season of chrysanthemums, and garden shops are well stocked with their brilliant inspiration. Mums' blazing orange, yellow and deep russet flowers echo the colors of autumn leaves and last for weeks in flower beds or in pots on the porch. Alongside the mums, make room for brightly colored pansies, which flourish in cool fall temperatures and even bloom through winter where temperatures are mild. Tiny violas are sturdier than pansies, and perhaps even more charming. They're especially pretty up close, so plant them along paths or in pots where you can admire them as you come and go.

Look beyond these classics at your local garden shop, and you're likely to find dianthus, snapdragons, calendulas and lots of fall grasses ready to pop into pots. Marigolds aren't just summer blooms; they are some of the best fall flowers for their rich colors, pleasingly neat habit and long-lasting blooms.

Vegetable gardeners may lament the season's last tomatoes, but there is actually a lot to look forward to in the fall: This is the season of beautiful, healthy greens. Many garden shops sell transplants in the fall, for an almost-instant vegetable garden. Kale, Swiss chard and radicchio, known for their natural cold tolerance, taste better after a light frost. Salad greens planted now will provide lettuce for a month or more, especially if you cover the plants on cold nights with spun fabric row covers, which allow light to penetrate but provide several degrees of frost protection.

Fall vegetable gardens are easy to care for: There are far fewer bugs and blights during this season, and cooler temperatures limit the amount of moisture lost to evaporation, so an occasional deep soaking is all your plants will normally need. If you're new to vegetable gardening, fall is a great time to get started -- you're sure to have a successful harvest, which will build your confidence for next year. If you're an old hand, you already know that food gardens in fall are simply more fun and less work than summer crops. Leafy fall greens are also great companion plants for flowers. Swiss chard, mustard, lettuce and kale add texture and color to pots full of mums, asters, marigolds and other blooms.

You'll have more time to enjoy your fall garden if you stow the rake and simply mow over autumn leaves, crushing them to tiny shreds that disappear as you walk behind your mower. Crushed leaves decompose quickly and put nutrients back into the soil. Autumn leaves also make the world's best compost. Use the bagger attachment on a mulching mower to gather leaves, which will automatically be mixed with a few late-season grass clippings in a perfect blend for a compost pile. You can also use this mix of crushed leaves and grass clippings as mulch in flower beds. Mulch applied in fall helps hold moisture in the soil, protects plants from extreme soil temperature fluctuations and helps limit the germination of weed seeds. As the mulch breaks down over the winter, it adds nutrients to the soil, which puts you a few steps ahead of the game when spring comes around.

The best fall gardens have a way of turning your head, adding depth and beauty to a lovely new season. They're naturally rich in color and variety. This is a season for both harvesting and planting, for a fresh palette and a different gardening perspective. As the days grow shorter and the shadows grow longer, pull on a sweater and spend some time in the garden. There is so much to appreciate at this time of year.

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)

Even if the daily mail doesn't amount to much, a cheerful mailbox garden stamps you as First Class in the neighborhood. It's also a fun gardening opportunity.

Mailboxes perched on posts at the curb give you a chance to create a postage-stamp garden design. Think of the mailbox as a piece of functional sculpture that gives your little garden both a focal point and a vertical element. Then design around it, choosing hard-working plants that will thrive in the usually rather challenging conditions at the curb.

A mailbox on a sturdy post must be front and center in your design. It can stand no more than eight inches from the curb, according to U.S. Postal Service recommendations. To make the best impression on the mail carrier and everyone else who passes by, the garden around the box should look attractive year round. You might start with a couple of small evergreen shrubs, as a conifer collector in Norfolk, Virginia, did when she designed her mailbox garden. Her evergreens anchor the plantings, are in perfect proportion, and give the bed definition even in the winter. Dwarf conifers are a good choice because they grow slowly: They will never overwhelm the space.

A gardener in Madison, Wisconsin, who favors naturalistic landscaping and has a meadow in her backyard, designed a mailbox bed to reflect her gardening style. She created a miniature meadow around her curbside mailbox using just a handful of plants. In a spot less than three feet on a side, she planted short prairie grasses, bright yellow coreopsis, bold purple coneflowers and a drift of black-eyed Susans. None of these plants needs special attention, and the design looks pretty through the winter, when the grasses turn into a tawny backdrop for the bristling black seed heads of coneflowers and black-eyed Susans.

Curbside gardens are not the place for plants that need pampering. Of course, you'll need to water the plants while they become established, but drought tolerance is important when you're choosing plants that must thrive at the end of the driveway, a long distance from the nearest spigot. Mailbox-garden plants are also subject to a lot of wear and tear. Even the most careful mail carrier may drive over plants that creep or flop across the curb, or step on ground covers.

You'll want sturdy plants at the front of the bed, on the street side. Small grasses and tough ground covers such as ajuga or creeping phlox will bounce back from occasional trampling. A ribbon of daylilies set back about six inches from the curb will produce a magnificent show of color through the summer, and if the foliage along the curb is damaged, it will not affect the flowers. Depending on the location of your mailbox and your driveway, you may want to choose plants that grow no more than about two feet tall, so they will not block your view as you pull out of the driveway.

Not all mailbox gardens have to be planted around a post. Sometimes, the garden might be a few steps behind the mailbox itself, forming a living backdrop protected from the challenges of a street-side planting but still reaching out to the neighborhood with a stylish punctuation mark of flowers. Pushing the garden back a little way also allows you to grow taller plants without obstructing mail delivery. This could be an opportunity to include a small tree in the scene, perhaps a spring-blooming magnolia or a crabapple. A gardener near Washington, D.C., made a round bed separated from her mailbox by a strip of grass. She planted a small magnolia in the center and a little cottage garden of perennial flowers around it. The bed looks beautiful from the street and draws the eye further toward plantings in the rest of the garden.

In some neighborhoods, monumental mailboxes are a slightly intimidating presence at the curb. They look more like barricades than small architectural elements around which to plant a garden, but adding just a few plants can soften their appearance. Ornamental grasses are especially effective when planted just behind such massive mailboxes, taking some of the hard edges off a brick pillar. In front, there may be room for a row of liriope, an indestructible plant with leaves that are grasslike, but more sophisticated. It will dress up the base of the pillar, just as foundation plants soften the transition between a house and a garden.

Perennials are classic mailbox garden plants because they come back every year. Chrysanthemums, iris, lavender, spiderwort, sedum, daylilies and phlox will all thrive in a sunny mailbox bed. In a shadier place, ferns, coral bells, lamium and hellebores are surprisingly resilient. Roses are tempting, but plants with thorns might complicate things for the mail carrier.

Supplement the perennials with colorful annual flowers -- zinnias, cleome, pentas, petunias -- that will bloom through the summer. A well-behaved vine, such as clematis, mandevilla or black-eyed Susan vine, will dress up the mailbox post.

Like any garden, a mailbox garden will evolve over the seasons and through the years. Borrow ideas from your regular garden and prowl the neighborhood and the internet for inspiration. Above all, don't let the limited size of a mailbox garden constrain your imagination. Good things come in small packages.

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)