The Art of Container Gardening

I love container gardening!  Practically anyone can have a garden in a container since it requires very little space. It can be filled with perennials, annuals, small trees, shrubs, herbs and vegetables.  I plant mostly annuals in containers.  They carry you through the dog days of summer when most perennials have withered out with droopy yellow or brown foliage. I like the bold colors that annuals can give you in the summer and they can really take the heat if you make sure to plant the right annual in the right location.

Container plantings can change a mundane landscape into a WOW landscape. They can soften hardscapes and create wonderful vignettes in the yard that would otherwise be a sea of green grass and brown mulch. Colorful containers allow punches of color and interesting shapes that cause one's eye to stop and take in the view.  Another positive attribute to container gardening is the ability to move containers around the yard until you are happy with the final look.  Sometimes a container will get moved two or three times before I am finally happy with the impact that it makes.

Let me show you just how much containers can make an impact in your yard.

Lots of hardscape here.

Soften the view with the right size and shape container overflowing with dainty annuals in a full sun location.

Lots of mulch with some interesting features, but it needs something to draw the eye to this part of the yard.

Big bold leaves from elephant ears in a simple container does the trick.

Do you have a lot of shade in your yard?  Try a container like this one which sits in full shade. There are no flowers in this container, just a variety of colorful foliage.

Again, lots of brown mulch with immature plantings provides a boring backdrop to the pretty white Adirondack chair.

Kaboom! A large container filled with an interesting mix of plants provides the much needed eye candy in this area of the garden.

What's going on in this corner of the yard?  Not much...a rose that has seen better days earlier in the spring and a clematis that is not in bloom.

A container with bold colors and a variety of foliage makes a big impact here.

Here, the container is prettier than the actual plantings right now. It still makes a wonderful addition on the grey stone to soften this corner.

A different view shows how the pop of color from the container draws your eye over to that corner of the stone path.

An otherwise boring area of the yard gets some high impact with the addition of two containers and a small statue.

A sea of green perennials and small shrubs gets broken up by a stone container planted with a variegated impatiens.

Another container to add to a shady spot.  This one is filled with a variety of caladiums and vinca.