Container gardening for beginners – how to create pots of long-lasting color for every season
Container gardening is one of the most exciting, versatile and fulfilling ways of packing our yards with interest and color. The great thing about container gardening is you have an almost infinite color palette to play with, from vibrant shades to calm, cool plants with silver-toned foliage, funky grasses and languidly trailing greenery.
It is also a great way of gaining green-fingered confidence and discovering the true potential of a wide range of plants if you are new to gardening, and for those who don't have a large outside space. It can be a bit daunting, so before you start buying and planting, do some research to decide on the container gardening ideas you like and try not to be distracted by the myriad varieties, shapes and shades available,
I started my gardening journey helping my dad plant up his patio pots every summer when I was a child, and it is still one of my favourite outdoor pastimes. Follow our tips below to create beautiful, color-packed containers and baskets for your yard, while avoiding the most common container gardening mistakes.
Before you start your container gardening adventure, draw up a list of the tools and equipment you will need. These will include:
There is a planter for every style of backyard and for every position in your garden, and here are some suggestions with the pros and cons of each one:
Kante 3 Piece Planter Set
Keilson Ceramic Pot Planter
Variety is key when it comes to planting up a garden container. The aim is to start with a central feature plant and work outwards to the trailing varieties that tumble attractively over the edge of your pots. Here are some of my favorite plants that work beautifully in containers.
These are the tall plants that sit at the center of your container. For summer container planting, I usually go for something eye-catching like a fuchsia, pelargonium, osteospermum or salvia. Ornamental grasses and silver-leaved varieties add a cool contrast to the colorful mix and dark-leaved varieties of dahlias add wow factor too.
For an endless candy shop of color, look at petunias, begonias, marigolds, dwarf nicotiana, which is one of the best night-scented plants. Also try nemesia and verbena - to name just a few.
Lobelia, trailing varieties of petunia, fuchsia, pelargonium and creeping Jenny are some of the best trailing plants for the edge of containers.
I also like to break up the color scheme with variegated ivies and trailing herbs, such as creeping thyme.
Ornamental grasses add movement and airiness to containers, providing an elegant foil to the more gaudy plantings around them.
Taller varieties such as miscanthus make graceful focal plants, while low growing carex and blue fescue can be used as low-growing plants around the feature variety.
As an added bonus, if left alone in the fall, their seedheads become a focal point of their own through the winter months
A mixture of succulents creates intriguing low-maintenance, drought-tolerant containers. Think of cacti, echevarias, sedums, which are one of the best backyard plants for pollinators, aloe vera and sempervivum.
Make sure they are potted up in suitable potting soil. They will need a very gritty, free-draining proprietary cactus potting soil and minimal watering to prevent the fleshy plants from rotting.
When mulling over your container gardening ideas, why not consider a herb planter? They are perfect for containers and can be grown by the kitchen door for easy access while cooking.
Consider a bushy rosemary in the center with low-growing aromatic herbs such as lemon balm, chives and creeping thyme around the outside.
Keep mints separate in their own container as they can be thuggish and take over the whole pot.
Why not try trailing fruit and vegetables? Lettuces, Swiss chard with colorful stems and dark kale such as 'Cavolo Nero' all look good in containers, either by themselves or mixed with ornamental varieties.
There are lots of tumbling tomato varieties including the original ‘Tumbling Tom’ which comes in red and yellow, ‘Cherry Fountain’, ‘Garden Pearl’ and ‘Rambling Gold Stripe’. Strawberries are another good bet.
The method is virtually the same whether you are creating a container or planting a hanging basket and once you have got the hang of it you can use it for all your planters, whatever size they are.
Absolutely not. There are many wonderful plants that can be added to pots to bring color to your yard, patio and balcony all year round.
I like to think up long-lasting fall planter ideas and spring pot ideas using varieties of hardy varieties of cyclamen, as well as dwarf daisies, pansies and violas, not to mention miniature bulbs including snowdrops, anemones and dwarf varieties of daffodils, tulips and Iris reticulata.
Intersperse them with hardy evergreen trailing plants, ornamental grasses and herbs and you have a stunning combination that will last you through to the spring.
Watering plants in containers is an important job, because a lot of things growing in a confined space will quickly use up all the available moisture.
Daily watering may be essential during very hot, dry spells. Be aware that containers in sheltered areas, such as against walls or beneath the eaves of the house, may miss out on rain and need extra watering.
Always direct the watering can or hose onto the compost, not the leaves or petals. If you are using peat-free compost, it can sometimes look bone dry on top, but actually be soggy underneath. The best way to avoid overwatering is to stick a finger in the compost up to your first knuckle. If it feels dry, then water, but if it feels damp, wait another day and test again.
If the compost is very dry and water runs off or sits on the top of the potting soil, add a couple of drops of dishwashing detergent to the watering can, as this helps break the surface tension and lets the water sink in.
Most proprietary container potting soils come with between 4-6 weeks of fertiliser already added, and general purpose potting soil will also have several weeks' worth of goodness in it before you add any fertilizer.
We recommend starting feeding your plants around five weeks after planting, using a general purpose fertilizer when plants are growing, switching to a potassium-rich tomato feed when flower buds form, as this will encourage the plants to produce their best blooms.
Many tree and shrub varieties work beautifully in containers, and scented varieties such as Daphne odora and Sarcococca hookeriana, or sweet box, make give visitors an attractive perfumed welcome if they are placed in the front porch.
Japanese maples (acers), bay trees and standard lavenders are a prime choice, but you can also grow dwarf varieties of fruit trees in pots.
Make sure the pots have good drainage and are large enough to accommodate all the roots without cramping them. Because trees take up a lot of nutrients, they will need feeding with general fertilizer in spring, plus regular feeds with liquid fertilizer through the growing season.
They will need re-potting every few years in spring, and in between they need topdressing, when the top few inches of old potting soil is removed and replaced with fresh.
To keep your containers looking glorious all summer and well into the fall, don’t forget to deadhead plants as soon as their flowers are starting to fade. This encourages them to produce new buds, so the color keeps coming for months.