Planting a Winter Container

The container plantings here at the Fairegarden are never satisfactory. The containers themselves, mostly colorful glazed pots and some hypertufa troughs are found to be more attractive than anything I can figure out to plant in them. For a round up of the containers, click here, here, and for the how to post on making the hypertufa trough, here.

Annuals are fun, but need more watering and feeding than I am willing to do to keep them nice. I want plant it and forget it types. Miniature evergreens fit the bill for some of them, with some sedums and hardy perennials doing well. But they just don’t look that good to my eyes, there is no wow to them.

There are three large containers in the line of sight from my cozy, comfy lazyboy in the addition, two turquoise and one dark green. In the past, they have been planted with lemon cypress trees, Cupressus macrocarpa ‘Goldcrest’ from the grocery, sold as miniature Christmas trees.

I loved the way they looked and sometimes added violas in winter and summer annuals for the warmer months. The little trees were getting too large and one of them died, so the still living other two were planted in the ground. Coleus cuttings were stuck in the new potting soil and looked okay until frost zapped them.

Evergreen clippings and large grapevine balls with tiny white lights were installed in the three pots as holiday decor. It was not up to snuff and a recent visit to B.B. Barns nursery in Asheville, North Carolina found some nice kale plants, a new to me Heuchera and little violas jumping into the shopping cart for use in the empty pots.

Following the norm of tightwadedness, these plants are not nearly enough to fill the containers properly. Let us go shopping in the garden for some evergreen perennials that can be used to fill in the blanks. Free!

Several plants were dug, keeping in mind the foliage color, texture, form and leaf size. With the darkness of the Heuchera ‘Autumn Leaves’, and Redbor kale, reds were avoided and gold, blue, silver and green were sought out.

Here are the plants that were dug from the garden to add to the purchases: golden alexander, Zizia aurea, volunteer salad burnet, Sanguisorba officinalis, Dianthus volunteer of mixed parentage, lambs ear, Stachys byzantina, wooly yarrow, Achillea tomentosa, Acorus gramineus ‘Ogon’, Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’, Festuca glauca, Vinca minor ‘Illumination’, and seedlings of love in a mist, Nigella damascena. I do love shopping for plants in my own garden, yes, it’s another link.

After the plants were installed, rocks and small hypertufa balls, click here for instructions on making them, were placed strategically to deter the digging of devil squirrels. There will still be digging up of the plants, for the critters here are not easily deterred, but we will keep a close watch on the containers and replant. Daily, if needed.

It will be interesting and fun to watch the free plants mingle with the store boughts. Maybe this will be the time that the container plantings bring a smile over the cold months. Maybe.

Frances

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~ by fairegarden on December 3, 2012.