IT’S ALL GONE TO POT
If you’re short of space or regularly move home, outdoor pots are a great way to enjoy gardening
Pots and containers are becoming increasingly important when it comes to gardening. Available outdoor space can quite often be confined to a windowsill, balcony, terrace or paved courtyard where pots are the only option you’ve got.
There’s also a new breed of gardener – young hipsters who have discovered indoors plants – and now they want to bring this idea outside, even if they are just renting, so they can move their “potted” garden from flat to flat.
Once the gardening bug bites there’s no going back, so this week I’d like to kick off our spring gardening with three types of space you can create in containers.
ALPINE
The first container has a slightly unusual shallow bowl shape. This garden mimics a scene you might find halfway up a mountain – a reinvention of an alpine trough garden that is usually created in old Belfast sinks.
The plants need good drainage so make sure there are holes in the container, and rather than using a humus-rich or a peat-based compost, use a mix of 50% John Innes No. 2 with 50% horticultural grit. I’ve added in a selection of stonecrops and houseleeks.
Sempervivum ‘Rubin’ has dark maroon rosettes, Sedum ‘Coral Carpet’ has white flower heads over mats of bright-green tinged bronzered foliage, and Sedum ‘Cape Blanco’ will produce golden yellow flowers over mats of pretty rosettes of silvery-white fleshy leaves.
When the danger of frost is gone you can add in more tender species such as cacti and other succulents. I’ve put a few stones on their sides to create the strata of a rock face and top-dressed with grit.
This container will appreciate full sun and it won’t mind a windy exposed place – as long as it’s bright – and will thrive on neglect!
These plants will also do very well in a little soil planted in the cracks of an old wall.
WOODLAND
The second is a woodland garden, which is the perfect option for a shady courtyard. The focal point is
a small flowering crabapple tree whose pretty white blossoms will develop into small red fruits over the summer.
Instead of placing it in the centre of the pot, it’s positioned towards the rear to give a more natural aspect.
Beneath its shade are a gathering of violas – make sure you deadhead these regularly to keep the display going. But the real star of this arrangement is Brunnera ‘Alexander’s Great’ with a lovely spray of blue flowers and silvery heart-shaped leaves. Ajuga reptans or bugle completes the picture.
Other possibilities here could be small ferns, hellebores, Geranium ‘Wargrave Pink’, heucheras, hostas, coleus and begonias.
COLOURFUL
Number three is another shallow bowl planted with a variety of colourful plants. The centrepiece is a pink hydrangea paired with some yellow Gazanias ‘Jupiter’ and Polemonium Bressingham Purple which has ferny foliage and rich blue cup flowers.
A bright red pelargonium completes the picture but should only be added when the temperature is not nighttime below zero.
To prolong interest, you could plant your favourite summer flower bulbs into the mix and then in the autumn fill the remaining spaces with spring-flowering bulbs. Other cheerful options for this pot would be lobelia, salvia, helichrysum, petunia, bidens and verbena.
This new breed of gardener can move a potted garden from flat to flat