Plans and ambitious lists of plants are the stuff of a gardener's winter dreams. Getting it all sorted out by springtime can be a challenge, but you can take a shortcut with a preplanned garden.

Confidence is your first crop when you plant a flower garden according to a well-made plan. Expert designs, and the plants to go with them, take the guesswork out of garden layout and eliminate the exasperation of walking around the yard with a plant in your hand, not knowing quite where it should go. When you buy a preplanned garden, you'll still have to dig a few holes next spring, but you will not have to second-guess yourself.

Preplanned gardens are first and foremost designed "to help people who just don't know where to start," says Jan Boonstra Pavlinak of Bluestone Perennials, who designed 10 can't-miss perennial flower gardens for Bluestone's catalog. The company's preplanned gardens, first offered in the 1990s, came about because "it can be quite overwhelming to be faced with more than a thousand varieties of plants" in a mail-order catalog, Pavlinak says, and "we want people to have success -- to like gardening."

The elements of garden design can be intimidating even for experienced gardeners. The art of choosing and placing plants for long-term success calls for more than some experience with a color wheel. Designers put the puzzle pieces of a beautiful garden together by considering color, form and texture, and taking the mature sizes of plantings into account. They know which plants belong at the back of a border to create a backdrop or screen, and which charmers should be up front, where you can enjoy their forms and fragrances as you come and go.

Designers also have learned to steer clear of invasive garden thugs, and they have the skill and experience to choose plants that will contribute a succession of color through the gardening season.

Professionally preplanned gardens take all these things into consideration and solve a lot of existing problems, too. Plants chosen for rain-garden designs help channel and absorb stormwater; pollinator and butterfly gardens are colorful sources of nectar and food for beneficial insects. Plans for deer-resistant gardens emphasize plants that deer don't like -- so you can have a flower bed that isn't simply a buffet for beautiful but voracious wildlife.

High Country Gardens, which offers 20 preplanned designs and the plants to go with them, introduced a water-wise garden design, with 27 drought-resistant plants, in the late 1990s. "It clearly struck a chord with customers, allowing them to plant a professionally designed garden with a paint-by-numbers format," says David Salman, the company's chief horticulturist. Unlike paint-by-number pictures, these gardens are full of life.

Encouraged by success, the company started working with designer and author Lauren Springer on themed flower beds, such as one for late-summer color, and on designs to enliven the awkward "inferno strip" between the sidewalk and the street. Springer and High Country Gardens also created a series of regional flower-bed designs to attract hummingbirds and pollinators, and they collaborated with the Audubon Society on flower beds bursting with plants that provide shelter for songbirds and attract the insects they depend on to feed their young. Native plants and ornamental grasses are features of these gardens, as they are in gardens designed for High Country Gardens' sister company, American Meadows.

When you purchase a preplanned garden, the plan you receive is a bubble drawing -- a scaled representation of a rectangular, square, oval or circular flower bed on graph paper, showing the positions of plants on the ground. Mark off your bed with strings and stakes, or just with a garden hose, following the guidelines given in the drawing, and prepare the ground according to the directions. Then set each plant in place, measuring to allow growing room between plants as recommended in the instructions.

You may need to interpret the plans to fit your site and situation. "Stretch it out, curve it around -- do what you need to do," Pavlinak says, but keep in mind the conditions in your garden and do not expect sun-loving plants to thrive in shade, or vice versa.

Pay particular attention to spacing. When you stick to the recommendations on your plan, "the plants may look way too far apart, but it's one of the advantages of a preplanned garden -- it compensates for the very common desire to space plants according to their current size, instead of how they will look after two growing seasons," Salman says. Mulching around plants will keep the spaces between plants looking neat while your perennials become established. Mulch also helps control weeds and conserves moisture in the soil.

Early spring is the best time to plant preplanned gardens, to get young plants off to a good start before summer's heat sets in, but it's never too soon to consider your options. "Whether you buy a preplanned garden or not, the designs give you ideas and provide an example," Salman says. You could think of them as recipes for gardening success.

SOURCES

-- Better Homes and Gardens also offers several garden designs (free to download) on its website, bhg.com.

-- Check out preplanned garden designs from: Bluestone Perennials (bluestoneperennials.com), High Country Gardens (highcountrygardens.com), American Meadows (americanmeadows.com) and other mail-order specialists. Special prices are available on some designs with plants through the end of 2020.

Tulips, daffodils and other spring-blooming bulb flowers don't have to be big to be beautiful. Small versions of our spring favorites are prized for their bewitching, jewellike blooms, and finding a place to plant them is easy. Now's the time.

Little bulbs have all kinds of advantages. They fit in small spaces -- in a corner by the patio, or next to the front steps. They're perfect tucked in around the trunk of a big shade tree, and they're naturally suited to the front edge of a flower bed, where you can't miss them. The bulbs that produce miniature tulips, daffodils, irises, grape hyacinths, crocuses and other spring flowers are themselves usually quite small, which means they're a snap to plant with a trowel. And they're almost always inexpensive, so you can indulge yourself: When you're planting 100 of anything, you naturally feel a bit extravagant, but these little bulbs will not put much stress on your budget. The reward of a few minutes' planting this fall will be a cheerful, personable display in spring. Miniature bulb flowers have outsized charm.

The parade of spring-flowering bulbs reaches its crescendo when tulips bloom in April or May, but the show actually begins in late winter, when there's still snow on the ground, as the first snowdrops push through. They can be hard to spot from the house, but they'll give you an excuse to bundle up to go outside and look for them. The moment you see their dangling, bell-like flowers -- pure or creamy white, with just a touch of green -- is a turning point in the winter garden.

After the snowdrops bloom, crocuses are not far behind. Pools of their small goblet-shaped flowers -- rich golden yellow, purple, rosy pink, white or boldly striped with purple -- sparkle like Champagne next to a garden bench or along the front walk. They're classic bulbs for planting in a lawn, tossed here and there like wildflowers. Plant several varieties, and you'll have a show that lasts for weeks. It's fine to dig a shallow hole only a few inches deep, toss a handful in, and then simply firm the soil over the top. If they're in a spot with excellent drainage and not too much moisture in the summertime, your planting will become more beautiful every year as the flowers go to seed and multiply. Crocuses are among the very first flowers to welcome honeybees searching for pollen on sunny days late in the winter.

Mail-order bulb specialists, who are busy filling orders right now for planting this fall, carry the broadest selection, but most garden shops in fall also stock their shelves with plenty of inspiration for spring gardens. Their bulb bins are likely to include a variety of grape hyacinths, which have striking, long-lasting clusters of bead-shaped blue flowers in midspring. Miniature irises and frilly scilla are also commonly available. Go ahead and experiment with several different small bulbs to get to know them up close and see how they perform in your garden.

Mini daffodils are perhaps the sweetest of all the tiny bulb flowers. The American Daffodil Society maintains a list of almost 250 officially recognized miniature varieties, but even the ADS struggles to define exactly what mini daffodils are. Colorblends, a mail-order bulb company, steps in with a definition of its own -- mini daffodils, Colorblends says, have "relatively small flowers on proportionately smaller plants, but all are very big in the cuteness category."

The definition works: mini daffodils, with flowers sometimes no bigger than a thimble, are just about as charming as they can be. Their flower stems may be only a few inches tall, but each bloom is a perfect scaled-down version of a larger daffodil. In the garden, they're irresistible in small groups of 10 to 12 bulbs, and delightful in drifts of 100. A bouquet of these winsome little treasures in a vase will take your breath away.

Mini daffodils even have cute names: Baby Boomer, Bagatelle, Bumble Bee, Minnow, Fairy Chimes, Little Oliver, and Itsy-Bitsy-Splitsy are just a few examples.

The tiny-flower season wouldn't be complete without the flash of glorious little tulips. Small tulip varieties mainly belong to a group known as wild or botanical tulips. Some, such as Turkestanica, are species flowers, with the unruly look of wild blooms in the high mountains of central Asia. Others are hybrids with star-shaped flowers -- a little more refined, but every bit as evocative of the wilds as the species. Botanical tulips naturalize easily in rock gardens and alongside stone edging or paths. They're perfect on a slope, where they're likely to spread by seed, and they're also pretty massed in front of clipped boxwood or yews, where they lend a jaunty informality to a more tailored planting.

Little bulbs truly are mighty performers in gardens of every size and style. They don't ask for much -- just a niche -- to prove that bigger isn't always better.

SOURCES

-- Three excellent mail-order sources for little bulbs are: Colorblends, colorblends.com; Brent and Becky's, brentandbeckysbulbs.com; and John Scheepers, johnscheepers.com.

Summer is slipping away, but there's plenty of life left in the garden. As the season changes, the spotlight shines even more brightly on shrubs.

Shrubs are a garden's middle layer: Beneath the tree canopy and above the free-for-all of flower beds, shrubs give the garden most of its structure and texture. They anchor beds in place, define edges and dramatically punctuate the garden's spaces. They add not only substance and character, but color. Shrubs work very hard for us without asking for a lot of pampering -- and they don't fade away, like a summer romance, when the calendar turns to fall.

"Fall is what I started with," says Eva Monheim, whose book, "Shrubs and Hedges," extols the virtues of her favorite plants. Monheim's list of top shrubs naturally includes spring- and summer-flowering choices such as roses, spireas and viburnums, but she's especially interested in the sparkling shrubs of autumn and winter, prized for their flowers, colorful fall foliage, bright berries and graceful structure. These are the shrubs that make a garden interesting all year round, she says.

The best shrubs have something nice to offer in several seasons, Monheim says. One of her favorites is red chokeberry (Aronia), which has white flowers in spring and, in fall, leaves that light up the garden like a bonfire, rivaling the color of maples. It also has beautiful berries. Some chokeberries are tall shrubs, but others will fit in even a tiny garden: A cultivar introduced by Proven Winners, called Low Scape Mound, only grows to about 2 feet tall and wide, "and it's the cutest thing you ever want to see," Monheim says. "It blankets the ground."

Low-growing shrubs have the advantage of being extremely versatile. They're great around the foundations of a house, where they never block the windows, and they fall neatly into line along a walk or around a patio.

Shrubs with bright berries are among the jewels of a fall garden. Aronia's berries can be brilliant red or shiny black, depending on the species. Beautyberry (Callicarpa) shrubs have long, arching stems covered in fall with clusters of rich purple berries that last for weeks. The eye-catching berries of hollies and viburnums show up from a distance but also draw you out into the garden to admire the display up close. And remember, when you grow shrubs with berries, you're not just adding an unexpected pop of color to the fall landscape; you're also planting a rich source of food for birds.

Judson LeCompte, a product development manager for Proven Winners, travels North America and much of the rest of the world looking for great shrubs for gardeners. Growing up in Alabama, he learned to appreciate the pleasure of fall gardens. "It was the only time you could go outside and not die," he says of the southern heat. "Fall is my favorite time of year." Beautyberry is one of his first choices among fall shrubs. "It's a no-nonsense plant," he says. "It does well across the country, it tolerates bad drainage and it thrives in heat."

Re-blooming shrubs may cause you to do a double-take in the fall garden. The Bloomerang series of re-blooming lilacs is particularly striking, with a bright fall flush of fragrant flowers that all but cover the mounded plants. Re-blooming azaleas light up the shade under trees with their flashy ruffled flowers. Shrub roses often put on a fresh and poignant display of fragrant blooms in fall, and the flowers tend to last a little longer in the cooler temperatures than they did in the heat of summer.

There's no need to wait until next year to give your garden a good jolt of color and life with shrubs that shine in the fall. This is a great season to plant, and, as gardening has surged in popularity this year, growers have put their efforts into increasing their inventory. Garden shops are well stocked with excellent choices. Planting now gives shrubs a chance to establish healthy roots in the soil before cold weather comes around. (Water well after planting.) You can expect to enjoy flashy foliage and, on flowering shrubs, fall blooms this year. Berry-producing shrubs are likely to be already loaded with fruit in their nursery pots.

Finding a great place for your new shrub is the easy part. A spot right along the front walk or on the edge of an often-used patio will let you get to know your new plant and will help you remember to water it once a week until the temperatures drop to freezing. Take a look at your flower beds and pick a shrub to fill in a gap or to create a new point of interest between perennials, even as they fade. Make a place for fall-performing shrubs in beds along the foundation of your house or just by the front door, to show your seasonal colors until the holidays at the end of the year grab the focus. After that, your new planting will just get better -- much better -- every year.

SIDEBAR

Great Fall Shrubs

Here are some more favorite fall shrubs recommended by Eva Monheim, author of "Shrubs and Hedges" (Cool Springs Press, $30), and Judson LeCompte, product development manager at Proven Winners (provenwinners.com):

-- Witch hazel: Native witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) blooms in midfall. The bright yellow ribbonlike flowers are especially decorative, sparkling amid the foliage as the leaves turn yellow and fall. Hybrid witch hazels are prized for their blazing fall foliage and late-winter blooms.

-- There are viburnums of all kinds and sizes, and many of them produce red or black berries in fall. Many also have spectacular fall foliage displays.

-- Groundsel bush (Baccharis halimifolia) has long-lasting, foamy clusters of creamy-white flowers in midfall.

-- Highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) produces the berries you find in grocery stores. This native American shrub makes a showy hedge and has brilliant red-to-orange fall foliage.

-- Oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) blooms in summer. The showy flower panicles fade to a tawny brown. In fall, the large leaves turn a bright burgundy. As the leaves fall, they reveal an attractive peeling bark.

-- Virginia sweetspire has bottlebrush white flowers in spring and deep dark red foliage in fall. (Itea virginica Scentlandia is a fragrant variety.)