Leonie Cornelius gets creative with containers
Even a tiny balcony or poky urban garden can be a green zone – just fill a container and off you grow! … and to get started, Leonie’s picks for all-year containers
The definition of a garden is ‘a piece of ground adjoining a house, used for growing flowers, fruit, or vegetables’. Where in many cases this definition holds true, the rise in populations of cities has changed how we define gardens. Exciting urban allotments have created vibrant new community spaces that redefine the traditional garden idea, or rather go beyond it to return to an ancient form of growing for communities rather than individuals.
Despite the rise in community gardens there is still a natural yearning in us to make our immediate surroundings more beautiful and more harmonious. Whether you have a small urban backyard or tiny balcony, there are many exciting ways to create personalised designs that bring a little bit of green into your spaces.
One way to take on the small patio or balcony garden is by creating exciting containers. Easy to replant, move around and maintain, containers are a perfect go-to for urban spaces.
The great thing is that – with the right soil and orientation – you can grow almost everything in your small urban spaces. Small trees, evergreen structure, masses of bulbs in spring and lots of summer and autumn colour are great ways to bring nature into your urban space.
A very handy little plant for the container is the neat little flowering Nemesia plant (main picture, far right, with Leonie). This little gem is a native of South Africa and is related to the Snapdragon. When you study its lovely little flowers you can see the resemblance between the two – both having pretty blooms reminiscent in shape of the mouth of a dragon. In its native South Africa, this plant often grows in disturbed ground and coastal, sandy soils making it an easy little warrior that does well almost anywhere.
These half-hardy or tender perennials also flower for a very long time and require virtually no maintenance to bloom for long stretches. This makes the Nemesia equally handy for a balcony container or as a colourful filler for a country border. Some varieties are also delicately scented – a real bonus for the balcony.
Deadheading the flowers – by cutting the stems directly under the flower – is recommended to encourage new growth. However, this year I left my Nemesia plants alone to see how long they would flower and if they would produce seed. After two months they are still going strong on my patio – although the stems are quite bare of blooms and flowering only at the tops.
This would look good in a border and shows that they are very low maintenance. I’ll be interested to see if they develop seeds, as sowing this plant from seed is incredibly simple. If you’re want to add colour to your balcony next season it’s definitely one to consider. Nemesia seeds can be planted indoors in late spring and will germinate well on a warm windowsill. When the seedlings are large enough to handle you can plant them into individual containers.
One thing to remember is that late frost will kill them, so make sure to harden them off gradually to acclimatise them and bring them indoors when there is risk of frost.
The Nemesia likes soil that is slightly acidic and moist but make sure it is not waterlogged.
Here are some combinations for year-round colour and interest:
SPRING
In spring there is nothing better than a mix of tulip varieties in a container because they make such a powerful statement. Triumph varieties such as ‘Royal Virgin’, ‘Negrita’, ‘Synaeda Amor’ and ‘Hemisphere’ give a stunning mix of white, rich purple and delicate pinks. Planted in a modern concrete container these are really visual. For their slightly earlier appearance, perhaps add a few white daffodils such as the Narcis ‘Triandus White’. Woodies have some great combinations of the above.
SUMMER
A great plant for a tall planter is the Verbena bonariensis. Rising in an elegant, structural manner with purple flower heads that appear to be floating, these are fabulous paired with fluffy compact grasses such as Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’, the fountain grass. The combination also works beautifully with the addition of Echinacea – such as Echinacea purpurea ‘Magnus’ to provide lovely structural seedbeds all the way to the end of autumn.
AUTUMN
Autumn gardens always conjure up the rich reds and burnt browns of Japanese Maples and Cherry trees. The Fuji Cherry or Prunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’ is one small specimen tree that does very well in containers and has a stunning autumn colour. In spring this tree has wonderful white flowers and, even in winter, it has a strong shape that looks elegant and architectural on a balcony or patio. WINTER There are many evergreen plants that do well in containers. Rosemary and bay, for instance, are both beautiful and edible. My favourite winter flowers, however, are Hellebores, which have shiny green foliage that looks great all year. Most produce stunning large flowers in a variety of colours, including pink, purple, white, pale yellow and lime green in mid-winter. This year, my Hellebores were still in flower in July, which meant they flowered for an incredible eight months non-stop!