It’s my favorite time of year…well, one of them anyway, time to fill the planters for the spring-summer season! There is nothing like the simple joy of a container garden. Easy to care for with slow release fertilizer and a daily watering ritual, they add so much to an outdoor living space. And NO weeding!
I may have mentioned, I am SO not a gardener. An eternal disappointment to my mother, who is a spectacular gardener, I am sure. I loathe earthworms and other questionable creatures that lurk in the soil.
But I DO love gardens and the lure of sipping a beverage amid pretty flowers and having a cutting garden of herbs right outside my kitchen is strong. And container gardening uses fortified and earthworm-free potting soil, so yay!
I have an assortment of medium and large faux cement fiberglass pots on my back deck that I like to plant and decorate for the seasons. Spring-summer is flowers and herbs. This fall I added some evergreens that anchor a few of the pots and provide year round backdrops for seasonal decor (you can see fall here, and winter here),
Today was a busy day…Between work and errands to the farm stand and nursery, and a visit from a gluten-free chocoholic friend that inspired an 8am baking frenzy! But I DID manage to get my deck planters done somewhere in there in the name of “work” because I took pictures :)
In case you are interested, these are the gluten free brownies I made. They are to-DIE-for and I use my favorite brownie recipe and substitute the flour with King Arthur Measure for Measure Gluten Free Flour. It works like a charm!
Gluten Free Caramel Sea Salt Brownies are SOOOO good!
Next stop was the nursery to get more potting soil and some of the herbs I couldn’t get at my wholesaler the other day.
This was followed by a trip to the farmstand for more of the milk in glass bottles that we are addicted to as much for the bottles as the local dairy product, and these pretty flowers jumped into my cart at the last second. I filled in the farmstand bouquet with lilacs from my bush that finally bloomed this year of 20 years of radio silence, and a couple of tulips I swear I did not plant that show up behind my house every spring.
Farm stand flowers and milk in glass bottles #shoplocal
A farm stand bouquet fortified with lilacs and tulips from the yard fills a vintage creamware pitcher in casual style
But back to the containers. I did a sweep of my wholesale greenhouse earlier this week and came home with some mixed hanging baskets, a ton of ivy, two trays of these ADORABLE lemon striped miniature petunia shaped flowers, a couple of dipladenia plants, a mandevilla vine, a couple of large green houseplants to keep on the deck for the summer, and a bunch of herbs. Whew!
Our haul from the local wholesale nursery
Container Gardening
Choose your Color Scheme
I recommend choosing a color scheme for annuals that plays nicely and accents the surroundings. Since our furniture and umbrellas are green and yellow, I like to use yellow flowers and mix in some bright pink, purple, and white. As a bonus, the colorful trumpet shaped flowers seem to attract hummingbirds, which are so fun to watch!
Prepare your Containers
If this is your first planting in the pots, be sure there are holes in the bottom so water will drain. Add some rocks or pottery shards to the bottom of the pot and some other filler if the pot is really deep and you don’t need that much depth for the plants (most container plants don’t need more than 12” of soil). I’ve even used styrofoam packing peanuts topped with a layer of screen in my really big pots. It’s a great way to reuse this irritating packing material and it keeps the pots from being too heavy. Top the filler with potting soil.
If you are reusing soil already in the planters, break up and fortify it by mixing in some slow release fertilizer like Osmocote with a trowel. Add a good amount of humus, compost, or new potting soil to the mix.
Mix Plant Shapes
Container gardening, like floral arrangements, should contain a mix of spillers, thrillers, and fillers. I like to include ivy, vinca or sweet potato vine for the “spillers” that cascade over the edges of the planters.
The “thrillers” are the taller spiky or showy plants and evergreens, and the “fillers” are the smaller assorted shapes of flowers or varied greenery that round out the arrangement.
Some pots of all one type of plant are okay sometimes too, but I still like to include some “spillers” in a few spots around the edges.
window box with vibrant lemon slice calibrachoa and trailing english ivy
The herb pots are a bit of a loose interpretation, but I still include ivy in these to cascade over the edges, and like the mix of shades and shapes of the different herbs.
Lemon thyme and ivy will spill over the edge of the pot, rosemary and basil will grow tall, and the purple and gold sage plants add some medium height and varied color.
We always include our favorites: basil (in large quantities - hello caprese and pesto!), rosemary, thyme, a couple varieties of sage, mint (essential summer adult beverage fodder!), and chives. The chives used to come back and spread every year, but disappeared last year, so we are trying a new batch to see if it will take hold and reappear. I also conceded to add cilantro, which I hate, but I’m in the minority in my house. At least it keeps it off the kitchen windowsill?!
potted herbs on the back porch are an easy way to have a culinary cutting garden just steps from the kitchen
So many choices for plants at the nursery. We tend to choose varieties that can handle less light and relative neglect, like this ZZ plant!
We bought a parlor palm and an umbrella plant to round out the shadier side of the deck with the hope that we can keep them alive in the house over the winter…we’ll see. My track record is not good! I blame it mostly on the light conditions, but it may just be me. Most indoor plants seem to require roughly the same attention as toddlers and I’m SO past that.
I almost came home with this gardenia - they are SO pretty and smell SO lovely…not sure it would survive me or the house, but I may go back for it anyway when I make another mecca to get shrubs for the front pots and the pocket patio project in progress!
I’m looking forward to my warm weather morning routine of sipping tea and watering my pots to start my day!
I highly recommend the Simple Joy of container gardening!
