We all know annuals such as petunia or million bells are great container garden plants, but have you ever tried including perennials in container gardens? This important group of plants can and should be an ingredient in every container recipe.

Many gardeners have a strict mindset about using annuals and perennials in container gardens: annuals are annuals and perennials are perennials, and never the twain shall meet. But if you base all your buying decisions on whether a plant will come back the next year, you will miss out on some beautiful flowers and foliage.

Perennials can add a whole new dimension to your container gardens if you follow the popular thriller, filler and spiller formula. For filler plants, choose colorful leaves and strong forms. It is wise to select plants that look good without any flowers, such as coral bells and cork screw rush. Their possible blooms are an added bonus.

For your thriller plants, try adding height or adding color with flowers. Most perennials will not bloom as long as annuals do, so swapping plants as they fade is key. I’ll share a secret that many landscape professionals use to keep high visibility areas looking good: Try planting the entire pot of your chosen flowering perennial into your combination planter. When the perennial begins to fade, remove it from the buried pot and replace it with a new plant.

Grasses make good thriller plants because their vertical lines add interest. Tricolor Pennisetum, with its green, pink, and white variegations, makes a great container choice. Or choose the Mississippi Medallion winner Gulf Coast muhly grass for its blue-green leaves and soft pink blooms above the foliage.

Choose Ajuga or Lysimachia as the spiller plant. If uncontained, these two will run all over your garden, but in a container, they will spill beautifully over the edge.

Combine perennials and annuals for the best of both worlds. The strong form of perennials combined with the colorful flowering of annuals is striking. The perennials will grow slower than annuals; be sure to start with larger sizes of perennials to keep the annuals from smothering them.

The fall season is a good time to make a perennial combination container. The temperatures are cooling off, and plants that went into survival mode during the hot months will start to grow again. Additionally, many garden centers have fall sales.

If planting several perennials seems too complicated, then simply plant a single perennial in a container.

Gardeners have options when it comes to handling perennials at the end of the season. You can treat the perennials as annuals and put them in a compost pile, or you can simply plant them in an open spot in the garden. Be sure to transplant them several weeks before the first frost to let the plants acclimate to their new home. Perhaps the simplest route is to leave the container as is and see what happens the following spring. If you choose this option and are using a ceramic or terracotta container, be sure to lay the container on its side. This will allow any water that freezes to expand without breaking the container.

There are many possibilities when growing perennials in containers. All the different combinations you can create may surprise you!