Step1
Plant potted flowers that were gifts. Plant them outside as soon as they finish flowering, or if it’s not planting season, keep the flowers healthy until you can put them outside. Potted flowers like mums, tulips, miniroses and lilies do fabulous when they are planted outdoors from pots. They are all perennials and will thicken as years go on, and they become beautiful centerpieces or background attractions to your garden.
Step2
Be bold. Next time you speak with someone who has a potted flower, ask what they plan on doing with the plant when the flowers are over. Many people just throw them out, so ask if you can have them when they're done.
Step3
Use unwanted shoots. If you have bushes like lilacs or other flowering plants that produce extra or unwanted shoots in the spring, dig into the dirt and cut the shoot, keeping on a bit of the root. Plant in a small pot at first to get it rooted, and give it lots of fertilizer. You will have plants in just a few weeks that are ready to be planted in your garden.
Step4
Collect seeds. In the fall, many annual flowers and plants produce seeds. Collect and save them in a marked envelope, and then plant them indoors in egg cartons about 6 weeks before the last frost. When the seedlings are big enough and the last frost is gone, plant them in your garden outdoors.
Step5
Dig up your bulbs from plants like tulips, dahlias and irises that will be cluttered together in the fall, and replant them, spreading them out. This broadens your garden with more of the same flowers that you already enjoy. If you don’t thin out the bulbs, some of the plants will become overcrowded and not produce properly, so take advantage and go the other way.
Step6
If you have friends who have flourishing gardens, ask them if you can have cuttings or shoots from some of their plants the next time they are thinning out their garden.
Step7
Check in with various garden centers and ask what they will be doing with the plants that are too ugly or weak or dead to sell. They may give them to you, or they may sell them to you for pennies. Take them home and cut them back to the bare basics, give them lots of fertilizer and watch them grow. Once they start growing shoots again, plant them in your garden.
Step8
Save the annuals. Many annual plants can be brought in over the winter and preserved so that they can be replanted in the spring outdoors. Some of these plants will not survive completely but can be kept alive, producing shoots that can be planted outdoors in the spring.
Step9
Use potted annuals. Some of the green leafy plants that are actually annuals can be kept in the pots over winter and put back outside in the spring. They often look much thicker and fuller the second year.
Enthusiast 
Comments
Cloey said
on 3/3/2008 In response to gnash said's comment on planting mini roses outside, I have many of these mini roses in my garden. In the fall I cover them with the leaves I rake up from my yard to keep them protected from the harsh winter weather, and they come back nice and healthy in the spring. I prune them back in the early spring and they grow to be about two feet high and wide, and are laden down with blooms all summer long. And so goes the saying, One man's trash is another man's treasure!
gnash said
on 3/3/2008 I especially like the "be bold" step. People do throw plants away all the time. Those miniature roses that groceries sell are really durable outdoor plants that take regular rose food and give such lovely blooms. With some pinching, they'll bloom all summer. Great ideas.