The experts agree that container gardening will still be the biggest trend around for city-dwellers with little space. Gardening guru Marjorie Mason Hogue, who leads gardening tours in Europe, prefers to call it "potscaping."

"It really has reached an art form in itself," she says. "My customers are very conscious of making groupings to create a pleasing picture. Many like tall plants at the back, medium in the middle and short at the front."

Mixed pot combinations, says Greg Carducci, are a perfect way for the avid gardener to decorate a condo patio, rooftop, firescape, windowsill, porch or other small space.

Hogue's passion for annuals also has led to a resurgence in container gardening, or "potscaping," which involves the artful grouping of container-grown plants in the outdoor landscape. These groupings can become mini-gardens in their own right, adding a much-needed touch of color and texture to bare patches left by early-blooming spring and summer perennials, such as the spectacular but short-lived Oriental poppies.

For those of us who don't already have a pool service, a gardening crew and a domestic staff to hold our lives together, the thought of someone bustling in once a week to sprinkle the houseplants might border on the absurd. But these green genies do exist, and ply their trade for ordinary folk as well as for the rich and famous.

Interior plant-scapers, as they're called, not only water, prune, feed, rotate and polish the leaves of whatever indoor flora you might have, they'll also bring in more of it, and arrange it all to suit the furniture. Many also do "pot-scaping," supplying and tending container plants for patios and balconies.