Ideas
On How To Use Container Gardening To
Decorate Your House And Garden
Nearly every house and garden presents
numerous attractive settings for
container plants. Suburban gardens,
estates, small city backyards, and summer
cottages—all can be enhanced by this
type of gardening. A few of the seemingly
endless possibilities include
entranceways, steps, courtyards, walls,
rooftops, balconies, patios, breezeways,
lawns, driveways, walks, sundecks,
windowsills, porches, summer houses, even
tree stumps can be utilized.
Let us start with the entrance, a
focal point for every house. A simple
arrangement consists of similar container
plants at each side of the doorway. If
the house is informal, painted tubs will
make a cheerful note, while urns or
ornamental pots are more appropriate if
the architecture is formal. The
arrangement, however, need not be
symmetrical, since a single container at
either side, particularly if the doorway
is off-center, is pleasing. A large
specimen can be balanced by a grouping of
small pots, and various other interesting
combinations can be worked out.
Sometimes, the front entranceway can
qualify as an outdoor place for house
plants, but be sure they are not exposed
to strong sun and wind.
Unexpected areas like side and rear
entrances can also serve as backgrounds
for pot plants in casual groupings. For
sunny steps, consider tubs of petunias,
or dwarf dahlias, or boxes of herbs to be
used in cooking. Tuberous begonias,
fuchsias, patient Lucy, and fragrant
nicotiana solve the problem of what to
grow in shade.
Porches or verandas, traditional or
contemporary in style, offer numerous
settings for pots, window boxes, and
hanging baskets. Indeed, the entire
container garden can be concentrated
there so that plants can be easily cared
for. If the porch is open on three sides,
it will afford exposures to suit a
variety of specimens.
The patio or terrace, beside or beyond
the house, where family and friends
gather to eat or relax, is an ideal
location. If it is formal, select clipped
evergreens and arrange pots in
symmetrical rows, perhaps lined up
against the house or along the edge of
the terrace. If the site is informal,
make casual groupings of one or two tall
plants with smaller ones in front. Either
way, allow for a few large plants in tubs
or boxes for accent and height.
Container plants may line walks and
paths that lead to the house, garage, or
garden. They can rest on paved areas
along fences and walls and on driveways
where they are not in the way. If the
driveway adjoins the foundation of the
house, plant containers may be placed
there.
Tops of garden or terrace walls are
ideal places, too. Put small pots and
boxes on tall, narrow walls and large
containers on low, broad surfaces.
Hanging plants of ivy geraniums in the
sun and fuchsias in the shade will
cascade from walls, as they do in the
patios of Spain, Portugal, and Italy. On
Rhodes, I recall a fifteen-foot wall
topped with a row of thirty gleaming
green tin cans full of roses and other
flowers.
Think of what you can do with rooftops
and sundecks where considerable space is
usually available. Here sun-loving
plants, like geraniums, most annuals,
cacti, and succulents can be grown, but,
again, include large specimens for height
to give a garden feeling. A few large
boxes and planters for trees and shrubs
are sufficient but be sure to include
some evergreens for year-round green.
Many gardeners like to insert
container plants in flower borders to
introduce unusual specimens, such as
tropicals in the North. Large tubs can be
set at the corners and small pots may be
scattered among the permanent flowering
plants. One gardener keeps a supply of
potted pink Fiat Enchantress geraniums on
hand to fill bare spots in her wide
borders, moving them about as needed.
Most of the geraniums are in four-inch
clay pots, but there are larger specimens
for the center of each grouping. Make
sure their secure, sink pots a few inches
into the ground.
You can always dress up the lamp post
in your yard with container plants at the
base or you can suspend a hanging basket
of lantana, perhaps from the top. Ivy
geraniums in an old-fashioned black
kettle are nice for the base. Bare posts
that support sectional roofs over patios
or paved surfaces of contemporary houses
look more attractive if potted plants are
clustered around the bases or permanent
boxes for plants are built there. Try
planting climbing ivy in a pot and train
it to climb the posts.
Novelty containers—donkey carts,
wheelbarrows, and spinning
wheels—can be fun in some places,
but, of course, such planters must not be
overdone. Usually they are set on lawns,
on a terrace or beside a gate or doorway.
(If you life in a neighborhood that has a
house owners association check with them
first to see if this is allowed). Steps
leading to a driveway or street or to
different levels in a garden can be
emphasized with pot plants. A few can be
arranged at the top or at the base of the
stairs. And, there are other
possibilities. Tree trunks cut to the
ground or left a few feet high make good
pedestals for large containers. In fact,
this can be a solution to the problem of
what to do with a trunk too expensive to
remove. If you have a tree with heavy
shade, why not construct a pretty sitting
area around it and decorate the space
with containers of coleus, wax and other
begonias, caladiums, ferns and other
shade-tolerant plants.
These are just a few ideas for using
container plants around your house and
garden. Use your imagination and have
fun. Happy Gardening! ~ Mary Hanna
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