• 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.

The blog is all about growing your own fruit,  vegetables and flowers, plus great ideas on garden design. Their profiles of real gardens are fascinating – from the stunning Old Rectory’s immaculate potager (the owners eat almost everything they grow) to some really cool guerilla gardening brightening up a council estate in London.

There are some great recipes too, to make the most of your homegrown fruit and veg, and the photography is beautiful.

I love the way they cover everything from starting with a window box or a pot on your desk and then extends to the 270,000 hectares of gardens we have in the UK.

Their passion for nature is really inspiring.

Best of all, container gardens are easily portable which make them ideal for busy Londoners who seem to move house quite regularly. Just pick them up and move them with you – they’ll add instant colour to your new outdoor space.

It’s also easy to give your balcony or patio a brand new look, by changing the planting or simply moving the pots around to create a different look. Rearranging your display regularly can help you to see which colours work best together, or where some plants will thrive better.

You also don’t have to spend a fortune to grow plants, flowers or veg in pots. Here are my top five tips for thrifty gardening.

• Why not re-use different containers for a portable garden? Buckets, wine crates and wicker baskets make perfect containers.
• Build up your own compost, you can use tea bags and coffee grounds to get started.
• Use the bottoms of egg shells to start seeds.
• Start growing bamboo, it makes a great support for growing tomatoes and terrific screening.
• Smear vaseline around the rims of pots to deter slugs. (Who surprisingly find their way upto my 4th floor balcony every summer!)