Blooming lovely displays are all a matter of taste
Horticulturist Tom Harris explains how to combine edibles and flowers to create an explosion of colour and flavour in containers
If you’re thinking of planting edibles and flowers in garden containers, have pots of fun by combining both.
Plantsman Tom Harris has perked up thousands of unpromising small spaces with containers of fruit and blooms to brilliantly colourful effect, as he demonstrates in his new book, Pots For All Seasons.
Tom said: “People have different criteria when growing veg. I don’t approach it on the basis of what will provide me with the most food. I just find that many veg and herbs are just as ornamental, and if I get some crops from them, that’s a bonus.”
Here, Tom reveals how to go about growing edible plants alongside pretty annuals: Go for good-looking veg
Tom said: “I don’t grow anything which I don’t consider to be good looking. Tomatoes, aubergines and peppers provide brilliant colour in pots, while leafy veg and carrot tops provide the green you also need.” Find out which veg grow better in pots
Tom said: “Some do better in pots than in the ground. Chillies and aubergines, for instance, tend not to do as well in the ground, while you can keep a better eye on leafy salads in containers, where you can crop them young and keep them protected off the ground.” Grow them separately
Tom recommends growing veg separately from flowers in pots, moving them around to experiment with what gives the best effect.
He said: “Try to grow in individual pots and group ornamental and foliage plants around veg, rather than putting them in the same pot.
“Having said that, I had a great success planting lobelia and lettuce in a pot together. They work really well in a wall pot or a basket. Nasturtiums also work well with lettuce. Certain veg don’t like too much competition. Aubergines, for instance, resent anything else competing with them and look great in pots on their own. I grow them in old olive tins which make the fruits look that much more striking.
“Courgettes should be put singly in the largest pot you can. The yellow-fruited or round-fruited ones – I grow one called Greyzini which has beautifully marbled leaves and grey-green fruits – look great.
“The ‘Baby Rosanna’ small-fruited aubergines are very productive but manageable in a container, and with tomatoes in pots, I’d go for the bush or trailing cherry tomatoes such as ‘Sweet and Neat’, a compact variety in yellow or red and ‘Tumbling Toms’ are the most productive.”
Combine herbs
If you want your herb garden to be changeable, plant pots of basil, chives, thyme and parsley separately, then group all the small pots into a much bigger container.
Tom said: “Lots of herbs get too big, too quickly. Keeping them in their smaller individual pots allows you to pull them out and put something else back in and repot them, and helps
keep rampant herbs like mint in check. Again, it’s about creating a picture; keeping herbs in a display, but neatly separated.” Make the most of ornamental leaves
Colourful leaves also add interest to combined pots. Tom said: “Some of the coloured mustard mixes look great, my favourite chilli is ‘Prairie Fire’ which is very compact. I grow it in a long trough. You might want to grow a taller variety in a single pot.
“In a display, each one can show off
the other in terms of texture, colour and shape, and the fruits bring you something extra that you wouldn’t just get with flowering bedding plants.” Which combos work best?
If you have a crate, intermingle sun-worshipping Verbena ‘Lollipop’ with trailing pink calibrachoa and cherry-fruited tomatoes, Tom suggests.
He said: “In baskets I always plant thunbergia with free-trailing tomatoes and parsley, so you have that wonderful contrast of different greens and then pops of bright colour from the tomatoes and thunbergia.”
“In larger planters with wigwams, grow sweet peas with climbing beans and you’re likely to get a better crop, as bees will be attracted to the sweet peas and will then pollinate the beans. If you group crops of veg with crops of flowers, you will be encouraging biodiversity and hopefully warding off some predators by confusing thems.” Think about pot height In a mixed display, Tom said: “Choose pots of different heights and different widths. I use anything from stacks of bricks with a paving slab, or upturned pots to raise my containers. You need some kind of variation in height and size to get a good look.
“Play around with the pots until you have the right combination.” Use colour combinations Tom said: “Coleus is another great foliage plant. The bright coloured leaves bring out the tones in tomatoes or the chillies, or even echo the red leaves of lettuce or mustard.” l Pots For All Seasons by Tom Harris, £20, is out now.