By Mark Hoskins Nursery Supervisor at Thorngrove
No matter how small your garden (or even if you don’t have a garden at all), you can grow a great range of plants in pots and containers. They can be temporary with bulbs and annuals or permanent with shrubs and perennials or a bit of both. Many vegetables and herbs are also good for container gardening. It’s even possible to grow aquatic plants in a large tub or barrel.
A few practical considerations first. Good drainage is crucial: it’s advisable to raise pots off the ground slightly so the pot is not sitting in water. Purpose made pot feet are available for this. If you’re using a ceramic pot with a single drainage hole it’s usual to put some broken pot shards in the bottom of the pot before filling with compost to prevent the hole becoming clogged.
For pots planted with annuals, any good general-purpose compost will do. For longer term planting with shrubs and perennials, it’s best to choose a soil-based compost like John Innes No 3. The soil in the compost will help retain nutrients and water, and the added weight will prevent pots blowing over in the winter. Good feeding and watering through spring and summer is crucial. Either mix in a slow-release fertiliser when planting, or liquid feed throughout the growing season.
Now we come to the fun part: designing your pots. Plants have three basic qualities, colour, texture and form.
Colour is self-explanatory, though can refer to flowers, foliage or bark in winter.
Texture refers to the shape and size of the leaves, form is the habit of the plant, either upright, mound-shaped or prostrate.
When designing your container, it’s a good idea to contrast some of these elements and harmonise others. A group of plants with many contrasting features may lack unity, while a pot with all the plants looking similar could be a bit bland. It often works well to choose a harmonious colour theme and contrast the textures and forms.
In the example I’ve shown here, I’ve chosen a black, white and orange colour theme. My procedure is to gather plants together that I think I may need and place them in the container and rearrange them until they look right. There are no hard and fast rules, but it’s a good idea to have a tall centre piece (a black-stemmed dogwood) some lower growing plants (an orange leaved Spirea and a coppery Carex) and some flowers (white Muscari and Iberis).
Just to show how changing one element can make a difference, I’ve changed the black dogwood for an orange one: maybe too much orange, but it’s all a matter of opinion. Even if you don’t have any outside space, you can plant up a miniature indoor garden with houseplants. I’ve used a shallow terracotta pot with a palm as centre piece, some ferns as filler, a Nertera for its orange berries and a Spider plant to trail over the edge. It’s always useful to have a few trailers to break up the edge of the pot and give the design a mature look.
With the Easter holidays approaching, planting an indoor garden in a pot like this is a fun activity for children. We have a great range of pots and suitable plants at Thorngrove and we even provide a planting service.
Have fun and happy gardening!