Ideas On How To Use Container Gardening To Decorate Your House And Garden

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, little city backyards, and summer cottages—all can be heightened by this type of gardening. A few of the seemingly continual possibilities admit entranceways, steps, courtyards, walls, rooftops, balconies, patios, breezeways, lawns, driveways, walks, sundecks, windowsills, porches, summer houses, even tree stumps can be utilised

Let us start with the entrance, a focal point for every house. A uncomplicated arrangement consists of akin container plants at each side of the doorway. If the house is colloquial, enamelled tubs will make a beaming note, while urns or ornamental pots are more apropos if the architecture is conventional. The arrangement, however, necessitate not be balanced, since a single container at either side, particularly if the doorway is off-center, is admirable. A ample specimen can be equilibrated by an aggrouping of little pots, and individual other absorbing combinations can be worked out. Sometimes, the front entranceway can meabound up as an alfresco place for house plants, but be bound they are not unwrapped to alcoholic sun and wind

Unexpected areas like side and rear entrances can also serve as backgrounds for pot plants in casual groupings. For cheerful steps, consider tubs of petunias, or dwarf dahlias, or boxes of herbs to be utilized in fudging. Tuberous begonias, fuchsias, patient Lucy, and musky nicotiana work out the problem of what to mature in shade

Porches or verandas, traditional or contemporary in style, offer numerous settings for pots, window boxes, and hanging baskets. Indeed, the smooth container garden can be centred there so that plants can be easily gave care for. If the porch is opened on three sides, it will yield 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 conventional, pick out nipped evergreens and set up pots in balanced rows, perhaps run along up against the house or along the edge of the terrace. If the site is colloquial, make careless groupings of one or two full-length plants with smaller ones in front. Either way, let for a few ample 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 enamelled 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 little pots and boxes on full-length, bare walls and ample containers on humble, beamy surfaces. Hanging plants of ivy geraniums in the sun and fuchsias in the shade will cascade down from walls, as they do in the patios of Spain, Portugal, and Italy. On Rhodes, I retrieve a fifteen-foot wall exceeded with a row of thirty glittering chromatic tin cans afloat 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 matured, but, again, admit ample specimens for height to give a garden feeling. A few large boxes and planters for trees and shrubs are adequate but be bound to include some everchromatics for year-round chromatic

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 chromatic Fiat Enchantress geraniums on hand to fill up naked spots in her ample borders, traveling them about as necessitated. Most of the geraniums are in four-inch clay pots, but there are larger specimens for the center of each aggrouping. Make bound their procure, 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 dark kettle are discriminating for the base. Bare posts that support sectional roofs over patios or enamelled surfaces of synchronal houses appear more bewitching if potted plants are constellated around the bases or abiding boxes for plants are constructed there. Try implanting climb uping up ivy in a pot and train it to climb up 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 up on with them first to see if this is let). Steps leading to a driveway or street or to antithetic levels in a garden can be stressed with pot plants. A few can be set up at the top or at the base of the stairs. And, there are other possibilities. Tree trunks reduce to the ground or gone forth a few feet eminent make acceptable pedestals for ample containers. In fact, this can be a solution to the problem of what to do with a trunk too big-ticket to take away. If you have a tree with dense shade, why not reconstruct a pretty sitting down area around it and grace 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!

Copyright © 2006 Mary Hanna All Rights Reserved