Keeping container plants cheerful isn’t just pot luck
There’s still time to plant winter containers before it gets too cold, as garden centres are awash with violas, pansies, skimmias, berried plants, evergreens and much more.
Yet so often, when winter sets in, colours fade, cyclamen rot, pansies and violas sulk, and containers can look a little lacklustre.
“Conifers are great because they come in so many shapes, sizes and colours and give you structure right the way through the season,” says container expert Harriet Rycroft, whose new book Pots offers practical advice on container planting.
“Then you’ve got a framework. You can fill in the gaps with seasonal colour that comes and goes, like bulbs and pansies, but you have that structure.”
Evergreen shrubs such as holly are tough and can be bought small cheaply and added to planters in a mixed display, then moved to a larger pot as stand-alone specimens and even made into topiary in subsequent years, she says.
CREATE GROUPS
Harriet likes to create groups of pots, focusing on details. “With conifers and grasses, you can make a framework so that when you stand back and look at the group, there’s a satisfying occupation of the space,” she says.
“There are ups and downs and things drooping over the pot. You can get classic triangular pointed shapes, but there are lots with much more character, which cascade or look fluffy or weird. If you mix that up a bit, you’ve got a framework that’s always interesting.”
ADMIRE SUBTLE COLOUR
The detail might be the fine needles or sprays of leaves or tinges of colour in winter, Harriet observes. “Some conifers are bright blue, others are green. Cryptomeria ‘Elegans’ forms a feathery, upright tree that’s bright green in summer, going rusty red when it reacts to the cold in winter.
“Hellebores are also very useful, as they start flowering very early,” says Harriet.
CHANGE FILLERS TO ADD INTEREST
Look in garden centres, which are great at creating seasonal displays and giving you ideas, she suggests. Also, lift plants out of your own garden to use in pots, such as grasses that have self-seeded. Even forget-me-nots, which have selfseeded, could be lifted. “They occupy the surface of the compost well, with their little green rosettes, then in April or May they will come out the same time as the tulips.”
CONSIDER ORNAMENTAL GRASSES
Harriet says: “Grasses provide movement. There are lots of good carex with different colours, while Festuca glauca makes lovely little tufts of blue or green. You can put them in pots on their own or plant small bulbs under the soil around them, such as crocuses, anemones or scilla.”
WHEN PLANTING WINTER POTS...
Avoid using compost with added wetting agents, because you won’t need that in winter. “Make sure the compost doesn’t feel sticky,” says Harriet. “If you squeeze it and it sticks together and doesn’t fall apart, it probably won’t be great for winter. But mix in grit or leafmould if the compost is too moist.”
WHAT ABOUT WATERING?
Check the compost in your pots every week and keep them consistently moist, Harriet advises. If a pot freezes, plants can’t pull moisture up from the roots.
Pots by Harriet Rycroft is published by Frances Lincoln, £12.99.