Garden bench – planter planting

The classic planter ‘mix’ is something like geraniums and ivy and the reason this is such an old favourite is that it works so well, but if you want to add a modern accent, why not include a bright green-yellow plant to give it an updated feel. This year’s big shade is chartreuse, the greenish yellow colour that gave its name to the liqueur – and plants in this fresh colour include Plectranthus coleoides Gold Delight, or Helichrysum, either limelight or variegatum, there’s Solanum variegata, which has a twining habit that can be trained either downward or upward, and Lysmachia nummularia Aurea, a perennial.

Remember that many plants that we use as annuals in planters are actually tropical plants that would live year round in a different climate, so try thinking of them as plants you can move at the end of the season to a sheltered area so that they might come up again next year.

If deadheading seems like too much trouble, you can have a colourful planter without any flowers at all. The old-fashioned coleus now comes in a range of varieties which will produce rainbow colours when planted in full sun – you can choose from yellow, lime green, reds so dark as to be almost black and variegated versions containing them all.

If you are feeling patriotic why not put red and white flowers in a blue container? Last year saw a lot of World Cup plantings and perhaps this year there will be some sporting event that we can celebrate with a bit more success! Because most "blue" flowers are really purple, it’s a good idea to find a real blue container and just plant red and white flowers to get the right mix of colour.

For something different you might try planting a mixture of plants that all need to grow in an unusual environment, such as filling a planter without a drainage hole with all sorts of bog plants, or fill a shallow rocky, well-drained planter with alpines. Household items make good planters too.

Garden planter can photograph by madaise, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

 

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