Container and Plants
Container gardens are a great way of creating a natural sanctuary in a variety of situations whether it be indoors or outside. They add a colorful and accented welcome to a room, patio or deck using pots filled with annuals or you can fill window boxes with wildflowers and small perennials that can be appreciated from the street and inside your home. You can place pots along the edges of outside steps, hide walls and other ugly concrete structures. You’re really only limited by your imagination and local conditions.
You can arrange your containers in a group for a massed effect or perhaps highlight smaller spaces with single plants. Regardless of what plants you choose and how you arrange them you’ll be delighted with this quick and easy way to create a garden.
Container gardening enables you to easily vary your color scheme. As one plant finishes finishes flowering,you can replace it with another. You can harmonize or contrast your colors, experiment with plants of differing heights. Also think of the shape and texture of the leaves. Tall strap-like leaves give a good vertical background to lower growing, wider leaved plants.
Get creative with your containers. You might have an old porcelain bowl or copper urn you can use, or perhaps you’d rather make something really modern with timber or tiles. If you decide to buy your containers ready-made, terracotta pots look wonderful, but tend to absorb water. You don’t want your plants to dry out, so paint the interior of these pots with a special sealer available from hardware stores.
Cheaper plastic pots can also be painted on the outside with water-based paints for good effect. keep in mind however, that cheap plastic pots can be damaged by UV rays. If you don’t feel like having fancy containers you can disguise them by choosing plants that will overhang the sides. When purchasing pots, don’t forget to buy matching saucers to catch the drips. This will save cement floors getting stained, or timber floors rotting. If you use wood planters make sure that they are untreated and that they won’t rot too quickly. Redwood and cedar are both relatively rot resistant.
Always use a good quality potting mix in your containers. This will ensure the best performance possible from your plants.
before you invest any money in your container garden decide where you want the pots to be located and get plants and pots that best suit the situation. There is no point buying sun loving plants for a shady position, or large containers for small areas.
If you have plenty of space at your front door, a group of potted plants off to one side will be more visually appealing than two similar plants placed each side. Unless they are spectacular, they will look rather boring.
Group the pots in odd numbers rather than even, and vary the height and type. To tie the group together, add large rocks that are similar in appearance and just slightly different in size. Three or five pots of the same type and color, but in different sizes also looks affective.
With some imagination and determination you’ll soon have a container garden that’s the envy of friends and strangers alike.
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