GARDENER'S READING ROOM
The Art of Gardening

Containers: Year Around Beauty and Color

If your containers are anything like mine, stunning at the end of last summer and looking like Mother Nature used them for target practice now, then it's time to renew and refresh them. There is no better way to brighten a patio, deck, or even your garden beds than with a beautifully planted container.

May is a perfect time to start the container process. That may mean adding a little more potting soil to tree and shrub containers and then adding summer splendor with cascading, colorful annuals or starting fresh with new potting soil, fertilizer, and plants. Either way Sky Nursery has an amazing assortment of annuals, perennials, evergreen and deciduous shrubs and trees, containers, potting soils, and fertilizers. What can be more fun than to choose a seasonal color palette, watch your efforts grow and bloom, and sit back and enjoy the beauty all summer!

I am a big fan of incorporating year-round interest into my pots with fruit trees, maples, contorted filberts, and pines. Often times the winter structure of a deciduous tree or shrub has as much beauty as its leafy summer look. There really is nothing more beautiful than a coral bark maple, a contorted filbert or larch, or a red-twig dogwood in a big, bold pot catching the filtered rays of sun on a winters' day. Having trees or shrubs in a pot also gives you basic structure around which you plan your summer look.

As always there are very simple rules for planting containers. I think it is very important to have a balanced look, that is, the height of the pot should balance with the height of your central plant. A tall tree or shrub would look top heavy in a smaller pot, the opposite of that being a tall pot with only short plants in it. After assessing your balance point then you want to fill and spill. I think that the best way to achieve the "fillage and the spillage" is to use brightly colored annuals that are bred to achieve summer-long bloom with a minimum of effort. A mix of summer blooming perennials and annuals is also a great look, for instance, Echinacea or Rudbeckia mixed with Alyssum, Nemesia, and Cascading Petunias or Million Bells. Other beautiful, evergreen spillers are trailing Rosemary: 'Irene', the straight 'Prostratus', or 'Huntington's Carpet'.

If I went through all of the plants able to make your containers a stunning, summertime show this article would be very long. Suffice it to say that Sky has an incredible staff on hand who are ready, willing, and able to assist you and a beautiful array of plant material that is sure to get your creative juices flowing! Now, just be sure you allow yourself the time to kick back and enjoy your containers.

By Debo Boyer
Skylights Spring/Summer 2009, Vol 24, No. 2

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