Container planting tips

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Thought I’d share a few handy tips this week on planting up containers (whether it’s a pot, a window box or an old enamel bucket) and how to achieve a simple yet stylish look.

• In general, choose plants that vary in height, shape and texture. Use taller plants at the back, shorter bushier plants in the middle and something vine-like/trailing at the edges. Mix your leaf shapes and textures – think glossy, fuzzy, large, narrow, long, rough, or spiky for a dazzling display. Plants with silver leaves look stunning too.
• Start off with evergreen plants as your all-year-round green base. They can be left permanently in your pot or window box and will act as a framework. My favourites are buxus, bay and lavender.
• Then you can change the display with the seasons, adding some contrasting colours. For instance, at the moment plants to consider for autumn/winter colour include skimmia and winter flowering pansies and violas. Winter flowering heathers are also a good choice for later in the year (November to March).
• Later in the year, you can plant bulbs for spring, and daylilies, violets, purple cornflower, phlox and verbena all give a long bloom period in summer.
• Lastly, ivy looks great as a trailer around the edges of window boxes and is generally a good all-round filler for gaps anywhere at any time of the year.

Or you could always just order one of our ready-planted containers. We’ll deliver them to your door and all you need do is position and water!

English Country Garden Window Box shown below.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Blog, Grow Your Own, Ideas & Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.