I’m not sure if the plant you admire is the snowy white straight species, Jasminum officinale, which you would have seen trained on willow supports in the garden beds, or Jasminum officinale ‘Affine,’ a particularly beautiful form flushed with pink on the buds and the reverse of the petals. We grow the second form in pots, although it is probably not much more tender than the form we grow in the ground. We purchased our jasmines some years ago from Logee’s Greenhouses in Connecticut, a mail-order firm that specializes in tender and tropical plants, but Logee’s is by no means the only mail-order source. Are you familiar with Dave’s Garden, which provides information on many garden plants, as well as lists of vendors who supply them? The website also rates vendors based on the experiences of gardeners who subscribe to the website. It’s a very useful tool for determining whether a plant will grow well in your area. See the Dave’s Garden page about J. officinale here.