It's time for a little summer getaway to a beautiful, relaxing spot. There's no need to pack a bag: Just step out the back door into your own garden.

Going on vacation in your own backyard may not sound very adventurous, but it's actually a very fine thing to indulge yourself in the pleasant surroundings you have worked hard to create. Instead of making all the arrangements and paying for airfare or hitting the road to get to a crowded beach, you might want to freshen up the flowerpots on the porch, get that mixed shrub bed you've been dreaming about off to a really good start, or simply take on a weekend project in a leisurely way, without worrying about whether you'll have a chance to finish by Sunday night. You don't need an itinerary; a modest agenda will do. You can cook out every day, get plenty of exercise and spend lots of time in the hammock.

People are catching on to taking time off in the garden. Every summer, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society makes garden time a priority in Philadelphia, with pop-up gardens designed to inspire visitors to get the most out of gardening in the city. Inviting and imaginative pop-up gardens "show what you can do with a good sense of design and an appreciation for excellent horticulture, without spending a whole lot of money," says Alan Jaffe, PHS communications director.

Last year, 75,000 people popped into the city's pop-up gardens, which are open from late spring through the end of the gardening season. They're essentially urban backyards -- on a grand scale, considering that most Philadelphia gardens are the size of postage stamps -- but the ideas planted in these gritty urban settings can quickly find their way home to tiny backyards, rooftop gardens, balconies and suburban yards, too, Jaffe says. The pop-ups are, of course, full of pretty plants and colorful flowers. They also make imaginative use of recycled and repurposed materials for tables and seating. Above all, they take advantage of easy, hard-working plants that thrive in local conditions. They're fun, not work, and that's the point of a backyard vacation; think of it as play time, not garden chores.

Smart, low-key design ideas are abundant. In one PHS pop-up garden on South Street in Philadelphia's center city, old galvanized washtubs, aged to a soft, silvery gray, have been repurposed as planters full of roses. Raised flower beds burst with hollyhocks, zinnias and lavender. A 10-foot-long planter on an industrial-looking base is devoted to an herb garden full of parsley, dill, sage, rosemary and five different kinds of basil.

The ideas behind these planters and plantings are intended to be portable: Visitors can easily re-create them at home on any scale, Jaffe says. Mixing ornamental and edible plants makes sense in a small space, he says, but, beyond that, the combinations of flowers with herbs or vegetables prove that plant choices do not have to follow conventional rules. "We want to teach people about expanding the palette they bring to the backyard, to use unusual containers and found objects," he says. "When you express your artistic sense, you're bringing your own personality to the garden."

This summer, a pop-up garden at uCity Square expands on the edible-as-ornamental theme. Parallel rows of large raised beds filled with summer flowers run along either side of a wide walkway. Simple iron arches over the walk will be covered with morning glories, cardinal vines, moon vines, scarlet runner beans and other vining plants as the summer progresses.

Big picnic tables encourage visitors to share the space. There are also bistro tables for more intimate conversations, and big patio umbrellas work their usual magic, rain or shine. The lighting at night is simple, too: Strings of bistro lights twinkle over the garden like stars.

Go ahead and steal a few ideas from these gardens for your own backyard vacation. Then share them in the best way possible: Fire up the grill, fill the cooler full of ice and beverages, invite a few friends over and take the rest of the day off.

SOURCES:

For more information about the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's annual pop-up gardens, check the organization's website: phsonline.org.

Small gardens are places of great opportunity, where design and smart plant choices can have a big impact. Even in a limited space, there's plenty of room to grow.

Think of a small garden as a chance to make a grand design in miniature, says Richard Woldorsky, a landscape designer at Bachman's Landscaping and Garden Services in Minneapolis. In gardens of any size, it's important to decide how you want to use the space -- and in a small garden, that's even truer because you simply have less space to work with. You can still have a dining area, a spot to hang a hammock, and a pretty flower garden, but you'll have to be creative to fit them all in. Some areas may have to serve more than one function. Above all, "You want to maximize every bit of space -- the walls, the edges and the base material," Woldorsky says.

Elizabeth Przygoda-Montgomery, a landscape designer and owner of Boxhill Design in Tucson, Arizona, says "there's no right or wrong" in small garden design. She looks for design cues in the architecture of the house, following its strong, straight lines out into the garden and picking up on the materials and colors in a home to make the garden an extension of the living space. Like Woldorsky, she emphasizes to clients the importance of making every inch count. "It can be fun," she says. Even a garden as long and skinny as a bowling alley can be "purposeful and artistic and striking, with a wave of color," Przygoda-Montgomery says.

If you're not sure where to start, take a look at circulation patterns through your garden. The path from the back door should lead gracefully through the garden to flower beds, a patio or a dining area. Whether the walks are straight or curved, the path should feel comfortable and natural. If you have a glorious specimen tree -- perhaps a crab apple, dogwood or Japanese maple -- you might think of it as a destination and plan the rest of your garden accordingly, Woldorsky suggests.

Putting plants to work is one of the secrets of success in small gardens. Slender vertical plants, such as upright hollies, hornbeams or arborvitaes, can frame views or be used as screens. Vertical plants also draw your eye up and keep the space from feeling too confining. If you don't have room for trees, consider building a cozy pergola, which will create shade for a seating area and will never outgrow its space. You can grow vines or roses up the side of it, giving your eye and the whole space a lift.

Shrubs will give the garden plantings interest, substance and depth, but look for small-scale choices, whether you favor evergreens or flowering shrubs. More is not necessarily better -- in a limited space, you're better off with a couple of well-chosen specimens, perhaps planted around the perimeter of the garden. Even if your garden is informal, imposing discipline and maintaining order will make the space more attractive and more functional.

Make flowers part of your plan, too, Woldorsky says. Flowers are bright and ever changing, and they really draw you outside. They also attract birds and butterflies, which make any garden more lively and beautiful.

If you don't have room for a flower bed, you can do a lot with flowerpots. Containers tend to serve as important sculptural elements in small gardens: They make emphatic punctuation marks at the base of the stairs, along the edge of a patio or at the bottom of a path. Go for big flowerpots, Przygoda-Montgomery says. One large pot on either side of a path has more impact than half a dozen smaller containers. Plants thrive in bigger pots and are easier to take care of, and you won't be tripping over them.

Successful small gardens depend on thoughtful decisions. In some ways, they're easier to design than larger properties because some possibilities are ruled out, Przygoda-Montgomery says. You can't count on sweeping views, but you can create striking vignettes. A pond is probably out of the question, but you could try a small fountain. "Less really is more," she says. "If you have a small space and it's done right, it's really strong." Focus your ideas, choose plants that fit the scale of your space and be sure to edit unnecessary clutter. In a small garden, details aren't lost -- they sparkle.

SOURCES

-- Independent garden shops often offer design services for gardens of every size and style. Bachman's Landscaping and Garden Services in Minneapolis (bachmanslandscaping.com) has a group of staff designers, including Richard Woldorsky.

-- Elizabeth Przygoda-Montgomery is a landscape designer and owner of Boxhill Design (shopboxhill.com) in Tucson, Arizona. The shop specializes in stylish products for outdoor living, including dual-purpose furniture just right for small gardens.

The heat is on, and annual flowers have arrived at garden shops, ready to make this summer the most dazzling ever. No other blooms can beat the performance of annual flowers, which bloom from May on, all the way through to the first frost. Plant them now, and enjoy them for months.

Annuals are all the bright marigolds, zinnias, salvias, lantanas, petunias, begonias, verbenas and other blooms sold at garden shops by the truckload in spring and summer for flowerpots and flower beds. They're often already in bloom when you buy them, and they just get bigger and better as the season progresses. They're easy to grow, versatile and lots of fun.

If you've never had a garden before, these showy, reliable plants will make a big impression in a pot by the front door or on the patio for a party. They'll make you feel like a garden artist right away. If you've been gardening for years, you already know that annuals are hard-working plants; they pump up the garden with color, fill in the inevitable gaps in flower beds and instantly turn flowerpots into movable showpieces.

"Annuals remain wildly popular," says Jeanine Standard, a spokeswoman for Proven Winners, the company that introduced high-performance Supertunias (and many other plants) to the gardening world. "There's no other way to get that amazing impact of color in a landscape," she says.

Pink and purple flowers are a hot trend this year, Standard says, and she thinks it reflects optimism among gardeners: "When people are optimistic, they love brighter colors." Proven Winners' flashy Bubble Gum Supertunia is the company's annual flower of the year, chosen by retailers who vote based on customer preferences. Besides pink, you can find Supertunias in lots of other colors: cherry, rose, raspberry, lemon, white and a rich, velvety purple. They will fill a flowerpot all by themselves, spilling exuberantly over the edges.

Gardeners are looking for more than color, Standard says. They want plants with other purposes, too, and annuals fill an important niche. They attract butterflies and other pollinators, and they can bring hummingbirds to a garden. Standard's favorite hummingbird plants are cupheas and salvias, which she pairs in pots with a Black Cherry Supertunia.

Consumers also want to conserve water and other resources, she says, so plants that don't need pampering are in demand. Hybridizers have responded by introducing ever-tougher annuals, such as lantanas, vincas, euphorbias and verbenas.

When you're buying annuals, a shopping cart gives you a place to try colors out next to one another and experiment with combinations that you can then plant in your pots and flower beds at home. Check the labels on the plants you like: These days, many labels suggest companion plants in complementary harmonious or contrasting colors, or foliage plants to add interesting texture to a combination in a flowerpot.

Don't be afraid to go big. "The one big trend I have been talking about with people is toward large, statuesque annuals, versatile enough for sun or shade," says Bill Calkins, product marketing manager for Ball Horticultural, which introduced ever-blooming, heat-tolerant Wave petunias, among many other annuals, including zinnias, begonias, lantanas, verbenas, impatiens and coleus. Calkins says customers like large annuals "because they look big and tough -- and they are; they're rock-solid."

These days, gardeners are making adventurous combinations in pots, Calkins says, starting with tropical plants for drama and filling in with colorful annual flowers and foliage plants of every description. The palette and performance of coleus plants, which are grown for their splashy, flashy foliage rather than for their flowers, are better than ever, he says, and many coleus work well in sun or shade.

New, compact, long-blooming zinnias, marigolds and torenias are showy plants that mix well with others in containers or look great on their own. Profusion and Zahara zinnias are fresh, bright and tough as nails. "We have zinnias for a reason," Calkins says. "They are awesome. They hold their color and just get more vibrant through the season."

Calkins, an avid gardener, also loves growing vegetables in pots. Both ornamental and edible peppers, for example, look terrific in containers. Arugula and greens of all kinds add plenty of color and texture to pots. "Gardeners are having fun with edibles," Calkins says, and they're doing it in flowerpots. Last year, he combined eggplant, petunias and marigolds in a flowerpot. "It's fun to play around with that stuff," he says.

That's what annuals are all about. Let yourself go with combinations of colors and textures. Plant pots with one flower you really love, or make combinations to suit your taste, to match your house trim or to complement the pillows on your patio furniture. "Nobody wants one-size-fits-all flowerpots," Calkins says. Put annuals to work, and you'll be richly rewarded.

SIDEBAR

Taking care of annuals

-- When shopping for annuals, be sure to read the labels. "Full sun" means at least six hours a day, although eight hours is even better.

-- If you're planting in flowerpots, buy fresh potting soil. Potting soil retains moisture well, and it is lightweight and easy to work with.

-- Pay attention to watering. Plants in pots will absolutely need regular watering. Plants in the ground have access to moisture deep in the soil, but they may need watering in the heat of the season, too. If you're not sure whether your plants need water, poke your finger into the soil. If it feels moist, you can wait a day to water.

-- Annuals need nutrients to bloom all summer long. Add a slow-release fertilizer when you plant, and supplement it by watering occasionally with a water-soluble fertilizer -- you can mix it in a watering can.

-- To keep annuals looking fresh and tidy, you may want to clip off flowers as they fade. This also encourages the plants to keep producing more blooms.