What to plant in a container garden?
The first thing you need to decide when planning a container garden is whether you’d prefer to grow your
plants indoors or outdoors.
A lot of people think container gardening is only for indoor growing and patios, but containers can actually be useful for any garden situation.
Containers are great for growing almost any type of plant, because they offer great versatility. If you plant your garden in containers and you need to move it later, it’s easy to do it. Not so if you have a traditional garden!
Many people do not realize that there is an enormous range of plants that can be grown in containers we see spring and summer bedding plants these give a lot of color, use containers of suitable size allow you to grow small trees, shrubs, climbers, roses, hardy perennials in very confined spaces on patios, or basements.
If you find your plants aren’t doing well because the space you chose is too sunny or too shady, there isn’t much you can do with a traditional garden, but you can easily move potted plants to a better location.
If you choose to have your container garden outdoors, you need to be sure to choose a good location for it
.
You’ll want to choose a place that has the proper amount of sun for the plants you wish to grow, but it also needs to be a place that’s very accessible. It’s easy to lose motivation to work on your garden if it’s several hundred yards away from the house!
Pots can create an instant garden by juggling the display from time to time will give a new look in minutes. Try experimenting with all kinds of color schemes move the pots around to test out different combinations. Once you hit upon a favourite scheme, adapt it for larger areas of the garden.
What is the best tree to grow in a pot?
- A restricted apple tree grown on a semi-dwarfing root stock.
- Japanese maple.
- Topiary specimen of box, yew, bay, privet or holly.
- Dwarf conifer.
- Something unusual like Sophora microphylla or Albizia julibrissin.
- Crape Myrtle. The mid to late summer flowers when few other shrubs or trees are blooming
- Amur Maple
- Dwarf Poinciana Tree
- Fringetree
- Paperbark Maple
- Kousa Dogwood.
- Washington Hawthorne.
Which shrubs grow well in shade?
- Oakleaf Hydrangea a.k.a. Hydrangea quercifolia
- Rhododendron
- Virginia Sweetspire a.k.a. Itea virginica
- Serviceberry a.k.a. Amelanchier
- Japanese Pieris a.k.a. Pieris japonica.
- Bottlebrush Buckeye a.k.a. Aesculus parviflora.
- Daphne. For fragrant, shade-tolerant shrubs, you can't beat Daphnes.
Evergreen container plants for shade.
- Daphne. Daphne plants are well loved for their small but incredibly fragrant flowers which appear in winter and early spring, when little else in the garden is growing.
- Box (Buxus) is a compact and versatile evergreen shrub.
- Fatsia.
- Lavender.
- Aucuba.
- Camellia.
- Euonymus.
- Mahonia.
Hardy plants for pots for outdoors.
Repetition can be effective, garden designers often use three or more identical containers planted with the same plants, for maximum impact.
- Coreopsis tinctoria.
- Cosmos.
- Impatiens walleriana.
- Clematis.
- Hedera helix 'Ivalace'.
- Euonymus fortunei 'Emerald 'n' Gold'.
- Pittosporum tenuifolium. ..
- Skimmia japonica.
If you have your plants indoors, you’ll need to be sure to select a very good spot. Most plants need to be fairly warm, so you’ll need to choose the warmest spot in your house if you use air conditioning.
Plants thrive best with natural light. If you don’t have a room with a lot of sunlight, you’ll have to use special plant lights for your plants. You can’t use just any fluorescent lights, because plants won’t thrive.
You need to use lights that are specially designed for growing plants. They contain a broad spectrum of light,which is closer to natural light than standard bulbs. You may also have to adjust the humidity in the room with your plants.
Some plants thrive better in higher humidity, and others do well in lower humidity. You may need to invest in special equipment to adjust the humidity if you’re raising very delicate or picky plants. You probably won’t have to do this unless you’re growing exotic varieties.
Next, you’ll need to choose which plants you want to grow. Be careful! Too many people choose to plan far too many varieties, and end up frustrated. Don’t grow anything you can easily pick up cheaply at the grocery store!
Finally, decide whether or not you want to grow your plants organically. If you’re growing indoors, this will probably be very simple to do. But if you’re growing your plants outside, you may find the frustration of dealing with pests is just too much for you. Don’t feel guilty if you find organic gardening too difficult. You can always try it after you have more experience.
