Choosing containers

20 Containers come in all shapes and sizes, as well as materials. Since many can be quite expensive, it is worth studying what is on offer before making a final choice. The best in terracotta, Italian-style swagged pots with fabulous, elaborate decorations, are wonderful but can be expensive. The bottom-of-the range pots can be plain and simple, but a pot of paint will transform them. Shiny metal containers make a smart surprise, and most need painting with a preservative to keep rust at bay. Wooden containers need anti-rot treatment, and are perfect as large containers for fig trees, or camellias which have to be grown in acid soil. Plastic containers are inexpensive and ideal for raising cuttings.

20a A standard pot with violas

20b Terracotta window boxes

20c “Long Toms”

20d Pink minulus in a bowl

20e A trio of terracotta pots in various shapes

20f Terracotta seed pan

Lattice seed pan

THE CONTAINER GARDEN

ABOVE: This effusive cascade is an excellent example of bow good a massive collection of plants can look. Yellow-leaved bops and delicate sweet punctuate the mass of green and complement the rich terracotta of the pots.

Don’t forget the range of hanging baskets, managers, and wall pots that are also available. A combination of different sizes, styles, and heights is very effective. You can also make your own containers. You can easily adapt old boots and buckets, baths and sinks, making them into novelty containers. With the first two, make sure that you give them plenty of drainage holes. With the second two, you need to get your hands dirty, covering them with hypertufa. Clean and dry the container, then score the surface with a screwdriver or chisel. Next add a smooth covering of hypertufa to the outer surface and well inside the inner rim. Plant up when dry.

A SUMMER HANGING BASKET

ABOVE: The recipe for this bright mix is bronze-leafed tradescantia, with pink and white petunias.

201Aluminum manger

Lead-style fiberglass urn

Lattice-work stone basket

Versailles tub (untreated)

Metal filigree badket

Peachstone trough

Wooden window box

Fiberglass window box

OLD-STYLE LEAD PLANTERS

ABOVE: Containers such as this need highly ambitious planting schemes. This imaginative all-green theme has plenty of size and bulk, and has been created using unusual species of plectranthus, with a colorful array of foliage plants.

MARGUERITES

LEFT: The great advantage of growing marguerite daisies is that they have a long flowering period, attractive, finely shaped leaves, and can either be used alone, as here, or to brighten up a group of softer colors.

PETUNIAS

RIGHT: Even the most effective, cleverest pot arrangements gain hugely from a stylish, symmetrical placing. These pots, elegantly framing the grandiose, ornamental French windows have a pink and white theme. They are planted with double and single petunias, pelargoniums, and white alyssum.

OXALIS

BELOW: Red-leafed oxalis makes a novel choice for a pot, but here fives a marvelous show of pink and maroon.


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