POOLSIDE COOL

This pot sits by the swimming pool where it has to look good from the first warm days in May right up to September. The planting also has to work at night, when the lights and candles are lit and the pool garden is elevated to a theatre-like set. I have chosen plants that will provide interest for the whole season, but also make sure the ensemble changes through the season and ends up in an exuberance of lush foliage and flowers.

How to achieve the look

I’ve kept the plant selection cool, but you could easily use blue-flowering plumbago and pink-and-purple cosmos. Pelargonium tomentosum is one of my favourites for its scent and leaves and we also train it as an espalier at the back of the loggia. Plectranthus argentatus is another favourite, flowering in a pale lilac in summer. Salvia Love and Wishes (= ‘Serendip6’) will flower all summer, but you will have to make sure it doesn’t get swamped by its neighbours. Plumbago auriculata f. alba starts flowering at the height of summer and I like to think of it as fireworks, especially at night. Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Purity’ is my desert island plant and I have grown it forever for its beautiful flowers and determination. The pretty terracotta pot is from Impruneta, a small village outside Florence where the potteries produce a vast array of different styles. I’ve loved them ever since I visited the village while I was studying in Vienna. The pots are resistant to frost, even on a Viennese roof terrace.

Many plants in this arrangement are very hungry, so I will feed them with a liquid fertiliser right until the end of the growing season. Discreet staking will be necessary to avoid damage and enable me to tease some pelargonium and plectranthus shoots right to the top. Salvias and cosmos will have to be deadheaded and if any plant tries to take over, it will have to be curtailed with secateurs.