Container gardening
IF you’ve read some of my previous columns giving tips on wildlife-friendly gardening, you might be thinking ‘that’s all very well, but I don’t have a lawn or flowerbeds – only a tiny paved courtyard, patio or balcony’. No problem. Even if you have barely enough outdoor space in which to unfold a deckchair, you can still make a positive change to the availability of wildlife habitat in your street.
Container gardening has become increasingly popular in recent years, as many gardens – particularly in urban and suburban areas – are often so much smaller now. As well as offering an attractive opportunity to bring some colour to your neighbourhood and even grow your own fruit and vegetables, container gardening can also be utilised for the benefit of your local pollinating insects and other wildlife.
In the previous garden to where I live now, we had only
3 sq m of paving and 5 sq m of decking at the end. The decking was promptly removed and replaced with a lawn and some small flowerbeds, but the bulk of plant interest remained on the paved area, grown entirely in pots and other containers – none of them particularly big in themselves, but combined to give the effect of a swathe of flowers and foliage, much as if there were flowerbeds there. It was such a joy to watch the seasons progress as the early spring colour of Winter Jasmine, Hellebores and Daffodils gave way to the festival of flowers in summer, highlighted by
Evening Primrose, Red Valerian, Everlasting Wallflower and Night-scented Catchfly – all great sources of nectar for bees, butterflies and moths. Plants such as Red Valerian and Evening Primrose in particular, as well as Verbena bonariensis and Nasturtium, are excellent ‘fillers’, which will readily self-seed into other pots and even cracks in paving.
Repurposing other containers or old bits of scrap can be a great way to avoid spending big bucks on expensive new ceramic pots. Anything from a watering can to a bucket or even some old boots can be used as a plant pot. Just make sure you drill some holes in the bottom for drainage. In my old garden I built a relatively small planter out of the wood from an old bed frame, lined with some weed suppressant membrane to hold the soil. In this I grew a surprising amount of wildlifefriendly plants, including Heather, Geum and Geranium pratense.
Another fun project to try, which I have done myself on a number of occasions, is a bit of a container rewilding experiment. Get a large pot or trough and sow it with a native meadow seed mix, or a combination of seasonal bulbs, plug plants and seeds. In the first year you will simply get back what you put in but, year on year, the selection of plants will evolve as certain species dominate, others prove less successful and some unexpected plants may arrive too. After a few years you will have a variety of local native species in your ‘container meadow’ and all you need to do is cut it down at the end of the season, once the plants have all set seed, just as you would if you were managing a much larger meadow.
Container gardening is also a great option for growing a selection of drought-tolerant species, especially given the increasingly prolonged and extreme hot spells we are now experiencing as a result of climate change. Particularly well adapted to these kinds of conditions are the Mediterranean herbs, which also happen to be excellent for pollinating insects. The likes of Lavender, Rosemary, Oregano (either the native Wild Marjoram or Origanum onites, sometimes called French Marjoram) and Thyme offer long flowering periods through the hottest months of summer and are beloved by a host of insects including butterflies such as Gatekeeper and Small Skipper.