Richard Unsworth, landscape designer

1 Plants must best quality: select the most robust, healthy and fullest specimens you can find.

2 Make sure the plant is the appropriate size for the pot: a good rule of thumb is to select one the similar size to the pot you are using.

3 Cluster pots in odd numbers – three is good – with significant size changes between pots. A good guide is to think of small, medium and large sizes: if the large is a whole, the medium pot should be two-thirds the size of the large and the small pot one-third of the large.