A gardening magazine dropped through my letterbox yesterday and, once the newest canine member of the family had stopped trying to shred it (Max is all for this recycling stuff), I managed to piece together enough soggy fragments to make out an article on growing vegetables in containers.

I gave it back to the dog because, despite the hype that says I am perfectly able to grow my own crop "no matter how small the space," the weight of personal experience says that this is not, necessarily, so.

A few years ago, I grew a selection of fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers on a six foot by two foot (less the walkway) concrete balcony. Everything scorched in the summer, and froze in the winter. Choosing varieties carefully did help; a self-fertile kiwi plant on a trellis secured about four inches from the wall, dwarf bush tomatoes, and that wonderful invention, the potato barrel, planted with the variety "Mimi," which produces tubers the size of cherries. Interplanting everything with French marigold (tagetes patula) helped prevent pest infestations (kind of), while four plastic troughs filled with three parts good multi-purpose compost and one part grit provided a rotational bed for mixed salad leaves, sown at weekly intervals and picked young. In theory, I could have harvested everything from root veggies to fruit from my little potager - and with everything growing in cheap plastic containers, and a profusion of masonry staples, gaffer tape and bird netting everywhere, it certainly put the "pot" in "potager!"

It did work. I couldn't move for tomatoes. The varieties "Orange Pixie" and "Totem" loved the close proximity of a hot brick wall, and fruited all the way into mid-November. The beetroots never got above the size of pickled walnuts, but were edible (in borscht), and the salads went crazy. All in all, though, it wasn't exactly self-sufficiency. Satisfying, perhaps, but a lot of effort for a little result.

Now, I have a garden. It may be something of a mud puddle at the moment, but it has actual soil; it is a living environment, an eco-structure in and of itself. There's more digging involved, yes, but I now have a whole host of little helpers. My garden is full of centipedes, rove and ground beetles - all valuable predators of nasties like wireworms, caterpillars and vine weevils - that were not supported by the environment of the container garden. Their prey, especially those hatching from eggs laid by itinerant parents, was.

While it's easier to control the environment of a container garden - the pH, the soil composition, even the addition of nematodes or biological control if you need them - it is an artificial creation, and does not have the defences of an established garden. Just as nutrients wash out of potted plants quicker than those in the ground, any eco-structure you create may not develop the way you think it will.

Of course, if you have a roof terrace, for example, and you plant it out with, say, myrtle (myrtus communis; m.c. 'tarentina' is a compact form only reaching about 8ft) and dwarf cherry (prunus avium) trees, in huge containers, you have a structural element to the garden. You can grow other large plants in this way - mullein (verbascum thapsus), or Sweet Joe Pye (eupatorium purpurea) are good examples, the former preferring chalky, poor soil, and the latter rich, moist loam.

Mullein is a protective herb whose leaves the Romans wrapped figs in for preservation, and which is also known variously as "candle-wick" for the use of its stems, dried and dipped in suet, as torches, and "cow's lungwort" for the fact that, while it is a useful expectorant, it tastes foul, and is in fact mildly toxic. Joe Pye was apparently named by a grateful New England pilgrim cured from typhus by the eponymous Native American healer; small amounts of the dried root, taken as a tincture, do indeed induce perspiration and act as a diuretic, helping to expel bladder stones, hence the folk name "gravel root."

Plants like these will help create a structure for smaller plants, casting shade and retaining moisture. They form a framework that can be filled in with other things but, hey, if most of us had room to have architectural planting in our container gardens, we wouldn't have container gardens, right?

I still use pots, window boxes and hanging baskets. Being able to control the growing conditions for particular plants is immensely valuable, even if it's not infallible. The key, however much space you have, is to find multi-use plants that will make the most of a small space or, if space is not an issue, to allocate certain plants to containers. Mountain mint (pycnanthemum pilosum) is not a true mint, although it has many of the same usages as the mentha species. Like its namesake, it spreads incredibly far, incredibly fast, so confine it.

Given the high population of slugs in my garden, I grow my nasturtiums in hanging baskets. Allowing the air to circulate and making the pests do a high jump before they get to the plants seems to prevent a few problems, and they add a splash of colour to the garden.

Hanging baskets can even be planted up and hung indoors. Remembering the basic rule of tall plants in the centre, trailing plants at the edge, there are innumerable combinations: catmint (nepeta mussinii is a good variety, but the one loved by cats is nepeta cataria. Needless to say, if you have cats, it's not a great idea to put this in a hanging basket…), with lady's mantle (alchemilla vulgaris) and cowslip (primula veris) or primrose (primula vulgaris) smells wonderful when hung near the back or front door, and provides you with edible treats as well as cosmetic and medicinal ingredients.

If all you have is room for one container, make it count. Plant varieties of mint, rosemary, thyme and other culinary herbs in clay pots, and place these in a trough, on a layer of grit or crocks for drainage. Fill the trough with soil and plug the gaps between the perennial herbs with annuals or biennials such as calendula (calendula officinalis) and parsley (petroselinum crispum). This keeps you in basic seasonings for most of the year, while calendula makes an even better ointment for bruises (in my opinion) than arnica.
If what appeals is the challenge involved in container gardening, and if you have a hot, dry wall to place a container on or against, try growing the saffron crocus (crocus sativus). You won't get much in the way of saffron unless you manage to establish more than twenty plants, and if you can do that, I'll award you the medal myself!