PLANTING POTS MADE EASY

Planning is key

Designing your pots in advance means you don’t over or under buy. Draw out a plan of the garden, then lay tracing paper over and cut out shapes representing each pot, which can be tacked on, and mark what is going in each one. You can then create a plant list of exactly what you want. When working out how many to buy, halve the spacing distance you would give them in a garden.

How to create form

Start with the Thriller

– the showiest plant in the pot. Next, select a Filler, to fill the gaps. In spring this is often a wallflower, in summer and autumn it might be a snapdragon or a grass such as Panicum ‘Frosted Explosion’. For tabletop pots and large containers, I also use a Spiller to break up the rim and sides of the pots – I love calibrachoas and trailing verbenas. Finally, I include a Pillar to give height – perhaps a tender perennial climber supported on a frame, or a taller grass such as the perennial Chasmanthium latifolium.

Consider colour

I think planting and colour is very much about one’s emotions. Personally, I love a soft, warm palette – peach, milky coffee, ivory, muted pink with a splash of bronze. A dark and rich palette is also effective – conker brown, nearly black, copper, gold, vermilion, olive green, deep purple and crimson. I think of these as velvet colours you want to wrap yourself in. However, I wouldn’t combine white with very dark colours in pots because it’s too stark.

Try the ‘wedding party’ design

I like to begin by choosing a Bride plant – the star of the show. Next, pick your Bridesmaid – usually the same colour as the Bride, but smaller. Try a tulip or a dahlia as the Bride – Totally Tangerine works well. The Bridesmaid could be a grass such as Panicum capillare ‘Sparkling Fountain’. Finally, add a Gatecrasher to provide a colour contrast. For spring, you could stick with a contrastingcoloured tulip or an annual like cerinthe. Don’t let the Gatecrasher fill more than a third of the pot, though.

Picking pots

Larger pots are easier to look after – they don’t dry out as quickly as smaller ones and don’t need so much feeding. I tend to use terracotta and metal pots, mainly zinc. I think brightly glazed ones are too noisy and compete with the flowers. In a very sunny area, you need to be wary of metal because it gets hot – lining with polystyrene insulating tiles will protect the roots. Terracotta deals better with heat because water evaporates through it, so it cools itself down.

Drainage and watering

Drainage holes are critical. At Perch Hill, we do a test where we fill an empty pot with water and wait five minutes. If they haven’t emptied out after that, we make more holes. We also lift winter pots onto bricks to improve drainage. A telltale sign that a pot needs watering is when you can see the compost pulling away from the edge of the pot. Press the compost back in place – otherwise, you leave a gap and the water can slide down the side. Water for 45 seconds before moving on to other pots. At the end, go back to your first pot and water it again, as this time will properly rehydrate the compost. >>