container gardening

Does anyone out there just plant up the perfect container garden at the start of the season and then not have to change the plants or move things around? 'Cause I've never been able to pull this off.

Plants get too big, bugs destroy them or they simply stop blooming and are done for the season. And with a 3-year-old, heading out to the garden center for more plants – much less anything else – always turns into a major project. So many times, I simply have to make do – ripping out a bunch of scraggly, overgrown plants from one pot, for instance, and replacing them with a smaller plant stolen from another. 

Hence this evolution of containers on my deck. I potted all these up between the middle of May and the first week of June, and already they've all required some major change-ups.

The diva

This container has had more costume changes than Beyonce at an awards show. It all started in mid-May with the Festival™ Burgundy cordyline that came via mail-order and the pink geranium and white-flowered bacopa put in the cart by my 3-year-old during a trip to Home Depot). I hadn't had a chance, of course, to really head out to a garden center and leisurely look for great plant combinations).

But then, of course, I stumbled across the container gardening articles at FineGardening.com and suddenly my container's understated outfit would never do. So here's Pot Number 2, after I finally got a half-hour to go down the street to the Agway garden center to pick up lime-green ipomoea (sweet potato vine), purple ornamental kale and red, white and lime-green coleus:

I was, of course, very satisfied with my oh-so-fashionable selection – that is, until the nasturtium in the container next to it got all out of control and monster-like. So I went for one more wardrobe change, snagging the ipomoea from this pot to replace it. I don't care if they say every pot needs a thriller, a filler and a spiller – without my spiller, I think the container looks more neat and tidy.

Waaay over the rainbow

Similarly, here are the original, rainbow-striped, original Tropicanna^® cannas I originally potted up in the beginning of June, and some ornamental kale and nasturtium I picked up at that same trip to Agway. With my frustrated inner artist out to play, I then grabbed some of the white stones out of our landscaping pathway and set them on top of the soil, just to see if a white "canvas" of sorts would intensify the color.

Then the nasturtium turned all yellow and ratty (I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that my approach to watering is to wait for the rain). So I ripped it out and added some croton. Why? Because I can. I fell in love with psychedelically-colored tropical plants on my April trip to Maui (see my previous post), and I think I just wanted the craziest, loudest collection of colors I could get my hands on.

Encroaching kale

And here's the Tropicanna Gold and Tropicanna Black cannas I planted along with aeonium, the white-flowered bacopa I stole from the first container (above) and yet more ornamental kale and nasturtium from that Agway trip, just to fill up the holes. But the nasturtium also overtook that, so I ripped it out of there, too. You can't see the aeonium or the white bacopa, so I'll probably move that over to the pot of Flower Carpet^® roses where I had to remove one of Dad's traditional cannas that got turned into swiss cheese by Japanese beetles.

And that's the life of garden containers. Even though it's an unpredictable game of switcheroo, it's a game I'll play again and again. Besides the croton I bought for like, two bucks at Home Depot, it didn't realy cost me an additional penny. Plus, it's like rearranging furniture – it gives me a creative outlet and lets me express myself. In other words, my husband would say, it keeps me out of trouble.

So what about you? Do you engage in Container Switcheroo? Or do you have a great container recipe that stays tidy and colorful all season long? Post a comment and tell me about it!