Window boxes are charming miniature gardens with all the same horticultural potential of a big flowerbed in the ground. Because the scale is limited, you'll need to concentrate on smaller plants, but you don't have to compromise on style.

When you're planning a window box -- or a series of them for the front of a house, a balcony railing or a terrace wall -- think creatively. You could fill a box with bright red geraniums, of course, but this is a fine opportunity to explore other options at little cost. Succulents, ornamental grasses, perennial plants and small shrubs are all great candidates for window boxes. Tropical plants, such as caladiums, small palms or bromeliads, are excellent choices, too. They will flourish through a long, hot summer without pampering.

But your first choice has to be about the box itself. Garden shops and big-box stores sell window boxes in standard sizes to fit most windowsills. Hayrack-style planters, lined with coco-fiber inserts that hold the soil in place, are also widely available. If you can't find a planter that quite fits your situation and suits your style, easy do-it-yourself plans, adaptable to windows of every size, are available on the internet.

There's no need to splurge on an elaborate container: Simple boxes may be best because the plants are the real stars of a window box. You may need to install brackets (available at garden shops and building-supply shops) to support the container. Whatever container you choose, it should have drainage holes.

Before you shop for plants, consider the conditions where your window box will be mounted. You'll need sun-loving plants for south-facing windows, and plants that flourish in shade for windows facing north. Most plants will thrive in spots that receive good morning (eastern) light. Afternoon (western) exposures can be a little hot and harsh, so if your windows face west, look for plants that can take the heat.

Your own garden can be the inspiration for window box plantings. Ideas that work in the ground will usually work well in planters, too, on a smaller scale. Go ahead and try your favorite plants in your window boxes -- there's nothing wrong with more of a good thing. You may want to echo the colors and textures in your garden, or complement them with different tones and shapes.

At your local garden shop, remember to think about all the options. Many people tend to rely on annual flowers for window boxes, but shrubs and perennial plants will make a window box planting more interesting than an all-annual design. They broaden your palette. Small shrubs, such as boxwoods or dwarf conifers, will give your window box garden a fine foundation. Take a look at miniature roses and even small hydrangeas. Plants in one-gallon pots might be just right: You want plants that are large enough to show up right away and get your little garden in the window off to a strong start.

Low-growing ornamental grasses, such as Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima), dwarf Japanese bloodgrass, short fescues or little fountain grasses, which have bottlebrush-like blooms, will fill in around flowers. Hostas, especially those with a creamy stripe or other variegation, will look far more distinguished in a shady exposure than a window box full of the usual impatiens. Try combining coral bells, hellebores, salvias or succulents with window box favorites, such as begonias and ferns.

Trailing plants will add to the fullness of your design, but choose carefully. Ornamental sweet-potato vines will require regular trimming through the summer. Cascading petunias or million bells (Calibrachoa), which has many small flowers that look like petunias, might be a better choice. Bacopa, lobelia and even ivy all trail gracefully.

Just like a garden in the ground, your window box can change through the seasons. You might start the spring with a few daffodils and tulips from a garden shop, then replace them with sunny annual flowers or herbs after the weather warms up and the bulb flowers fade. In midsummer, you can brighten up the palette with new blooms; and in fall, you could find a spot in your window box for mums and asters, or add edibles such as Swiss chard, mustard and kale. Don't worry about disturbing existing plants; everything will settle down as soon as you water. On the other hand, if a plant is getting tired, get rid of it -- and the sooner, the better.

Window boxes are the perfect size for new gardeners who are not yet quite ready to commit themselves to a big undertaking. They're also a great way for experienced gardeners to try out new ideas. For renters, they are an easy and obvious choice. You don't even need a window: boxes fit on a balcony or deck rail, and they're pretty on a porch or patio. And now is the time to plant them, for a miniature garden you'll be able to enjoy all season.

A big garden is a delight until -- suddenly or gradually -- it's not. All those magnificent flower beds, the great, sweeping green lawn and your own personal arboretum might become more of a burden than a benefit when the kids are grown and gone and you're ready to pack your bags and see the world. You still want to stop and smell the roses, all right, but perhaps just one rose bush is all you need.

Downsizing in the garden doesn't have to be demoralizing.

"It's interesting. For me, it's good. I can be creative with that," says Kristopher Dabner, owner of The Greensman garden design business in Kansas City. Dabner often works with longtime clients to redefine their gardens after years of residence in one house. He helps other clients who have moved from a large property make the transition, gracefully and happily, to a smaller space. Yes, you can take your grandmother's peony plant with you, he tells them, but "think of this as a new opportunity to be creative, and to think about your garden in a different light."

Distilling the beauty of a big garden down into a more compact frame can be exciting and invigorating. It might involve putting smaller spaces to work for more than one purpose, and drawing on your experience with a large garden to choose the plants that look great through all four seasons, Dabner suggests. Shrubs that bloom in spring, produce bright berries that attract birds through the summer, take on brilliant autumn colors, and have interesting structure that reveals itself in the winter, more than earn their keep in a garden, he says.

A smaller but no less beautiful garden will call for a choice selection of smaller trees and shrubs. Dwarf conifers and small shrubs may need a little pruning from time to time to keep them trim and tidy, but "they don't need hacking back," Dabner says. Instead of a full-sized ginkgo tree -- a great pleasure in a big garden -- plant a dwarf ginkgo, he says, "and you can have the great texture and glorious fall color on a scale that works with the scale of your garden."

Mary Palmer Dargan, of Dargan Landscape Architects in Cashiers, North Carolina, also takes a special interest in downsizing for clients who no longer have the time, budget or desire to work with big garden spaces. Baby boomers are moving in this direction, she says. Often, downsizing is precipitated by a life-changing event: The kids move away, a spouse dies or you buy a summer home halfway across the country. Older clients may not be as agile as they once were, "and there are hazards you didn't even think of," she says, such as negotiating a winding path of rough-cut fieldstones or climbing up and down steps between two garden levels.

Dargan helped her mother reinterpret her garden when "she didn't need all those garden rooms" anymore and no longer needed a big, flat lawn for parties under a tent. You don't have to move to make the transition to a smaller space, Dargan says: Just change your focus. Make the most of the back porch; add on a pretty terrace or a courtyard. Replace flowerbeds, which need and deserve a lot of attention, with fine shrubs. Add lighting so you can enjoy your garden late in the evening without venturing out. If possible, let garden-maintenance companies handle the mowing.

Clients who shrink their gardens, either by moving or by redefining what they already have, often don't want to give up entertaining outdoors, and they don't have to. "Socializing is important," Dargan says, but maybe you don't need a great big picnic table any more. Scale it all down.

Garden art and fountains are high on the list of handsome and undemanding garden features clients want in their smaller-scale gardens, Dargan says. Indulge yourself, she tells them. "This is the last time they are going to do it, and they really want something of lasting value, something that resonates with their heart."

No matter what your circumstances or situation, the best way to get started downsizing is to start with some judicious editing, Dargan says. Simplify your flowerbeds. Limit your collections. Take advantage of a lifetime of experience. Concentrate on plants that do not need pampering, and plant them in generous sweeps and repeating patterns throughout your garden. Changes like these will make your garden simpler to care for.

Good design, careful decisions and pinpoint focus make the transition exciting. "Clients tell me, 'I love my garden so much more now,'" Dabner says. Smaller gardens really are not a compromise: There's still plenty of room for charm.

SOURCES

-- Kristopher Dabner, The Greensman, thegreensman.com

-- Mary Palmer Dargan, Dargan Landscape Architects, dargan.com

Plant a library in your garden, then step back and watch what happens. Little Free Libraries give you a chance to cultivate relationships and your garden at the same time.

Little Free Libraries are small, freestanding libraries, on the scale of an extra-large mailbox. They're mounted on a sturdy post in the front yard, usually close to the sidewalk, and stocked (by you) with a limited, but choice, selection of books. Neighbors, dog-walkers and passers-by can take a book from the library or leave a book of their own. Each book is one of a kind, and the inventory is constantly turning over.

These little libraries can be designed and painted to look like schoolhouses, barns, fire stations or cozy bungalows. By their very nature, they are garden art. Like a child's playhouse, a potting shed or even a big urn on a pedestal, they add an architectural element to the garden, which in turn opens up opportunities for interesting landscaping around them. But there is more to these structures than garden decor. They reveal something more than flowers do about your interests and your aesthetic sense, and they're likely to start a few neighborly conversations.

When you install a Little Free Library in your garden, you're joining an informal worldwide network of like-minded people. The Little Free Library movement, which started in Wisconsin in 2009, has grown into a far-flung community of 50,000 Little Free Libraries, which are found in all 50 states and more than 70 countries. By the end of 2017, the organization hopes to double the number of little libraries, to 100,000.

Gardens and reading go pretty naturally hand in hand. Good gardening always requires a fair amount of homework, for one thing, and escaping to the garden with a good book is a time-honored way to take a break from the busy, buzzing world. Reading in a garden, in the company of birds and flowers, really does make the workaday world seem far away. Some Little Free Libraries incorporate a bench into their designs, so people curious about the books can sit down and have a look before they make a selection.

Having a Little Free Library in the front yard also changes the dynamics of your garden and your neighborhood. Passers-by and neighbors may have always taken an interest in your landscaping, but when they stop to peruse the selection of books in the library, they have an excuse to look around at the garden more closely than they otherwise might. If you happen to be outside when someone stops to check out the books, you might find yourself answering questions about your favorite hostas or the best way to prune hydrangeas -- and a neighborly conversation is off to a good start.

Place a few steppingstones around the base of your library, and make room for a few tough and hardy plants. Sedums, daylilies, mums, daisies and small evergreen shrubs will enliven the space and the library, and will also shrug off a certain amount of wear and tear. Avoid plants with thorns: This is not the place for shrub roses or prickly cactus.

Enhance your visitors' experience of your Little Free Library with some fragrant plants. This would be a good spot for a pot of mint or some rosemary, basil or thyme.

Climbing plants, such as an annual black-eyed Susan vine or a perennial clematis, will clamber happily up the post and make your little library look like an old-fashioned cottage in a garden. To help bring the garden up to eye level, you could even put a green roof on your library; try succulents, mosses, small ornamental grasses (such as blue fescue) or even a strip of turf from a garden shop. You can easily cut the grass on the roof with a pair of kitchen scissors.

James Baggett, the editor of Country Gardens magazine, maintains a Little Free Library in Des Moines, Iowa. He shares the task with a neighbor, a little girl who has been his assistant librarian since she was 9 years old. Together, they stock their little library with books for young adults and for grown-ups, too. "I like to think ours is one of the better-curated Little Free Libraries," Baggett says.

There are no rules for stocking your library. Gardening books are fine -- as are field guides, cookbooks and picture books for kids. After a short time, you'll begin to get a feel for the books that are popular with borrowers and contributors in your neighborhood.

The seasons will come and go, and your library visitors will get to know your garden pretty well: When they tuck a book under their arm, you can bet they're also borrowing a few gardening ideas to take home to their own yard. Maybe they'll even plant a library of their own, and the word will keep spreading.

SOURCES

-- Most communities welcome Little Free Libraries, but before you put up a little library in your garden, check local zoning laws. The Little Free Library website (littlefreelibrary.org) includes how-to information and FAQs that may help. The website also has links to plans, kits and prebuilt libraries.

-- Several Etsy shops specialize in ready-made Little Free Libraries. (etsy.com)

-- There is even a book about Little Free Libraries; "The Little Free Library Book," by Margret Aldrich (Coffee House Press, $20).

-- For more ideas, check Pinterest, Instagram and Flickr.